LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Shelf J^X*^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



PELICAN PAPERS. 



BY Sf 

A%^ „ ■ n5fc '" 1 

A. PELICAN, Esq. 



New York : 
F. B. PATTERSON, Publisher. 

1879. 










Copyrighted 1879, by F. B. Patterson. W-f 



Printed by 

Kilbourne Tompkins, 

79 Cedar St., N.Y. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



The Cry of the Pelican, 5 

Licensed Throat Cutting, - - - 16 

Tramping, - - - - - - -35 

Puff-Balls, - - - - - -- 52 

Firing at some Old Images, 95 

Blowing your Own Trumpet, - - 127 

On Pretentious Nomenclature, - - - 136 

The Shabby Genteel, - 143 
Brain Scattering, ------ 176 



THE CRY OF THE PELICAN. 



The extent of human folly tends to conceal its exis- 
tence. This seems paradoxical, but that does not seem 
folly which is judged by fools, and fools are the great 
majority. 

With philosophic study of the workings of the human 
annnaltutum, there ever comes not only wonder at its 
folly, but at its vanity, its pretention, its incongruous 
action, its conventional absurdities. 

A fool, in the philosophic sense, each has been or is, 
and a complete graduation from the ranks is rare. 

Folly is natural or conventional — the one class springs 
from ignorance, the other from association. One wor- 
ships the idols of the race, the other those of the agora 
or market place. 

The natural fool cares not ; he remains ignorant of 
his status ; he worships with colored eyes ; if possibly 
reformed, there will be comfort in self-comparison. 

To the conventional fool there is positive compla- 
cency in his folly ; for he and those with him are in an 
acting majority. A majority over the wise makes Folly 
and its worshippers lawful, normal and respectable — 
qualis grex talis rex. Hence, although Nature may 
be lovely, Fashion makes art and artifice more so ; 
Custom will prevail even if it bringeth evil or death. 
Through the distorting glass of conventionality, vice 



6 PELICAN PAPRES. 

may become seemly, folly wise, virtue ridiculous ; wrong 
will have a double face, and human life though a bubble 
tossed about, the sport of impish fancies, prejudices 
and chimeras, will seem guided by the breath of Wis- 
dom and Truth. 

"Wisdom crieth, rarely one heedeth," saith a reformed 
fool. Some thinker, mayhap, may pause and survey 
the grinning throng, and microscope and classify its 
idiot life ; and exhibit it, with but little profit. 

The angels laugh or weep, but the crazy panorama 
goes on. The motley battalions rush on and jostle 
each other along Time's pathway, varied in guise and 
mien — in spirit homogeneous. 

The history of peoples and of races repeats itself, 
because human character repeats itself. Time makes 
no permanent moral change ; Experience no continuous 
improvement. 

The dark ages revolve, dictators and mobs alter- 
nate — nation after nation, with a like history, blos- 
soms and ripens and rots ; the cry for blood was as 
loud at Paris as erst at Rome ; there are still Neros to 
fiddle amid the flames ; folly will still dissolve pearls and 
conquer conquerors : and cheats and deluders will 
beguile as of old ; and the old dreams will be dreamed. 

Schools, theories, modes, prejudices, fallacies, live, die 
and revive in an endless chain, and Folly's bells ever 
jingle. 

From the fact of man's long existence in a social 
state, it might well be supposed that the teachings 
of experience would so have accumulated wisdom, that 
mutual intercourse would so have developed reason 



THE CRY OF THE PELICAN. 7 

and propagated knowledge, that the necessity of reform, 
at this day, should have almost ceased. 

But such is the proneness of reason to stray and 
relapse, so dark and numerous are the caves where 
ignorance hides, so uncertain is the light of truth amid 
ever-forming clouds of error, so stagnant the healing 
waters unless the angel be ever near, that errors and 
wrongs followed by revolution and reform seem not 
matters of mere local or occasional occurrence but facts 
moving in cycles, establishing principles of social phi- 
losophy. 

One class of folly and its reform is but the antetype 
of another to take its place, on the theatre of time, 
ever changing but recurring. 

Nor is mere dull ignorance alone the cause of error. 
Abnormal conditions are produced in temperaments of 
activity as in those of sloth ; eccentric mental growths 
arise as well from intellects of fire as of those of clay ; 
the flights of cultured speculative thought may be as 
insensate as the vagaries of ignorance, or the blows 
struck by prejudice or blind error. 

In matters of religion civil polity and social life, 
reformatory movement is still a human necessity for 
human happiness. 

Woe, however, to the reformer ! — If a Sampson, he 
falls with the temple. 

Socrates was a reformatory genius. He battled folly 
daily; in time the good seeds he sowed reaped a harvest; 
we partake of it now, but the "folly" of the day 
doomed him to death. " So pious a man," says Xen- 
ophon, " that he did nothing without the advice of the 



8 PELICAN PAPERS. 

gods — so just that he never injured any one ; so com- 
pletely master of himself that he never chose the 
agreable instead of the good ; so discerning that he 
never failed to distinguish the better from the worse, 
in short, the best and happiest of men." 

" Frequently have I wondered," says he, " by what 
arguments in the world, the accusers of Socrates con- 
vinced the Athenians that he was deserving of death at 
the hands of the State." Xenophon did not compre- 
hend the power and faculties of the great Goddess 
" Folly." 

There is a man here, mayhap, who has grappled with 
truth and reason, and thinks and acts wisely and fights 
Folly boldly and strenuously. 

His voice is drowned in the roar of Babel. He is 
jostled aside or made to drink hemlock. 

" Damn his preaching," say the merry jongleurs ; 
" Let him be anathema" say the conventionalists ; 
" He is acrazed," say the old or new school, hugging 
their dogmas ; " Away with him ! crucify him ! " cry the 
social inquisitors ; " Go up thou bald-head — Go ! " laugh 
the gay boys. 

My reforming friend, if you do not want to be thrown 
into the lion's den or the fiery furnace, you had better 
bow down and worship Baal Peor with the rest — unless, 
perchance, you are a second Daniel or are fire-proof. 

Custom will ridicule you ; mediocrity will curse 
you ; ignorance will hoot at you ; the army of noodles 
will bite their thumbs at you ; conventionalism 
will crush you ; you will kick vainly against the 
pricks ; and your protests will be cited as instances of 



THE CRY OF THE PELICAN. 9 

mental aberration. The cry will be let him go to 
Corcyra ; all this will happen, mind you, unless you are 
a mental and social conformist even in trifles, and be- 
come a votary of the jingling goddess. 

Where is Truth ? however, " says the inquirer." How 
find the standard ? What the road and the process of 
discovery? Even revelation from the fountain head is 
mystical and mythical. 

The best way, perhaps, is to grope for it ; if you do 
not find it in one dark place, try another — anything but 
stagnation. 

The changing vagaries, the discordant opinions, the 
continuous errors of mankind are the strongest proofs 
of the existence of a controlling elementary power based 
upon everlasting foundations. 

The glimmerings had of truth and justice, man's 
general consciousness of such things and their occa- 
sional self assertion and triumph when all else is 
abortive, testify to them as fundamental and as based 
on a divine order. 

That Truth must exist somewhere in all things, after 
their kind, is self-evident. 

She is a difficult prize for mortals to catch, however ; 
and, often, when nearly overcome, like Daphue springs 
into a new shape and eludes. 

Often when caught, as we think, we find it is ugly 
Ignorance in a mask, or mischievous Folly, or a fair 
dream that dissolves into mist. 

Often she hides in dim recesses and shines with a 
glimmer that leads on an endless dance. Often, when 
found, she is shut in dungeons or tortured in inquisitions 



IO PELICAN PAPERS. 

or her mouth is closed by the Giants, Prejudice and 
Crime. 

The search after cosmical truth from the early ages 
down, exemplifies the vagaries of error and the persis- 
tence of ignorance. The reaching after the Celestial 
has even been more discordant. 

The history of both philosophic and theologic 
thought and teaching exhibits impressively the blunder- 
ings, contentions, and changes of human dogmatism. 

The early philosophic world groped in primeval intel- 
lectual darkness, battling with chimeras born from every 
brain, and struggling for defined form from a mass of 
protean and chaotic shapes. The wonders of nature, 
as has been well said, served not as lights of interpreta- 
tion, but as igni fatui leading each observer into his 
own intellectual bog; where plunging deeper and 
deeper, he remained in the morbid isolation of self- 
satisfied and self-created error. 

The great problems of being were by one solved 
through the medium of proportion of numbers. " Num- 
ber is the essence and substance of all things; 
Number is the mean between the immediate sensuous 
intention and pure thought," shouted the Pythagorean 
from his lurid fen. 

"There is no division of space and time," shouted 
back defiantly the Eleatic, " but all thought and life 
consists in pure being, unalterable and immeasurable ; 
all being is pure abstraction and ignotion of matter and 
sensation." 

Another branch of Eleatics belabored their adver- 
aries with " sensations," and the " atomic theory ; " 



THE CRY OF THE PELICAN. II 

while Metrodorus, of Chios, folded his arms in a 
gloomy profundity of skepticism, and muttered con- 
tinually, " I do not even know that I know nothing." 

"The true elementary principle of nature and life is 
water," cried one of the Ionic philosophers. "You lie, 
it is air ! " cries'another ; " air is the breath of life and 
the soul of all things, the great motor and primeval 
regulator." 

" Movement," cries Theraclitus from his bog, " and 
fire, the eternal energy of things ; that is the union of 
the being and the non-being ; or the becoming, is the 
universal law, and will account for all ! " 

" This movement of things is generated and supplied 
by the two moral forces of love and hate in the uni- 
verse," taught Empedocles. 

" No," cries Democritus, " it is unconscious necces- 
sity." 

<l Mind, mind ! " cries Anaximines from his den, get- 
ting a glimpse of the ideal, " is the true primal casualty 
or motor ! This is the great first impulse ; ' but as to 
where lodged or how continued, Anaximines was inex- 
plicit. 

" You fools," cried the Sophist, wielding the sword 
of gladiatorial dialectics, " there is no principle of 
thought ; the modifications of the human mind ex- 
clude all possibility of certain knowledge." 

Then march along Socrates and his disciples, and 
semi-disciples ; Plato with his doctrine of absolute 
ideas ; Aristotle with his sublimation of " form " and 
"matter" — the battling of the Stoic and the Epi- 
curean — the sneers of Pyrrho and his Sceptics — the 



12 PELICAN PAPERS. 

mysticism of the new Platonists and the Nominalism 
and Realism of the Scholastics. 

Modern Philosophy follows as wild and erratic as her 
elder sister, and the brain reels as it tries to unwind 
the labyrinthian thought of Descartes, Malebranche, 
Spinoza, Locke, Liebnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, 
Hegel, and the rest of the dreamers and illuminati. 

Spirit and Matter are contending Titans in the phil- 
osophic brain ; sometimes matter is as potter's clay in 
the hands of a superhuman motor spirit. And again, 
the adverse thinkers are deifying the atom and apotheo- 
sizing the clod. At one time man is but dust and clay> 
at another, he is the god that has crawled out of prime- 
val mud ; and although the unintended product of 
molecular forces, his humanity dominates in earth and 
sky. 

The theological variation of the various sects even of 
Christian belief, that have been and are, astonish, con- 
found and confuse us. Not only of those of barbar- 
ians and semi-barbarians, but among the enlightened. 
These sects and dogmatists mutually accuse, denounce, 
rail at and kill each other. Belief has been and is still 
at times enforced by the axe, the stake and the thumb- 
screw. 

Looking back from apostolic time, the schisms and 
sects have followed in a continuous and turbid stream. 

The Gnostics with their czons and demi-urge, the 
Mainchaems with their dualism and paraclete. 

The doctrines of Sabellius with his one essence, bal- 
anced by Arius and his triple division. 

The doctrine of the " Omoousios " affirmed as a 



THE CRY OF THE PELICAN. 1 3 

fundamental truth under Constantine, and repudiated, 
and the " Omoiousios " upheld under Valens. 

The " double incarnate nature," of the Nestorians 
upheld as an article of faith by the council at Selucia, 
and overthrown by the Eutychians at the council of 
Ephesus. 

The Pelagians with their innate goodness of man, 
condemned as a heresy by the councils of Carthage and 
Ephesus, and upheld as true doctrine by the council of 
Diosipolis. 

Cassian and his followers denying the necessity of 
" inward preventing grace," and his opponents uphold- 
ing that it was a sine qua non. 

The Iconolatrae or image worshippers on one side, 
and the image breakers on the other, discussing the 
matter in blood. 

Arminius and his free will thinkers on one side, and 
the Gomarists and Superlapsarians on the other. Cal- 
vin's grim doctrine of predestination, and Luther's of 
the action of the will. 

The great schism of the procession of the Holy 
Ghost from the Son, as with the Latin, or without 
Him, as with the Greek. 

The theories of transubstantiation, consubstantiation 
or symbolism of the Eucharist as upheld by this or 
that sect with fire and axe. 

The divine prerogative of kings or the higher pre- 
rogative of the Pope; the Socinians and the Trinita- 
rians ; the broad church and the narrow church ; the 
phantasies of the Swedenborgian and the self-inspira- 
tion of the Quaker ; and the theories and the counter- 



14 PELICAN PAPERS. 

theories of Methodist, Baptist, Universalist, Presby- 
terian, Episcopalian, and Romanist on faith, doctrine, 
discipline, and hierarchy. 

The Pagans, when they had the upper hand, slaugh- 
tered Christian and Jew ; the Jews, when they had the 
chance, persecuted Christians ; and Christians in their 
turn persecuted Jews, and then persecuted each other. 
The orthodoxy of the moment burned schismatics, and 
schismatics heretics, and heretics deists, and deists 
atheists. Ecclesiarch opposed Heresiarch, and both 
of them used as arguments steel and fire against each 
other and their mutual opponents. 

The sacredness of human life, all liberty of body and 
spirit, were put at the mercy of the imaginings of the 
day and hour. 

The great cardinal virtues seemed lost in the maniacal 
excesses of metaphysics and sectarian jealousy. The 
very foundations of religion were sapped in the devilish 
spirit that sought to sustain it ; the Christian Dove of 
the first century expanded into a Vulture ! 

That arch villain, Henry VIII., whilom termed De- 
fensor EcclesicB, repudiated Rome for a woman's smile, 
and that made the English Reformation. He is a shin- 
ing commentary on the divine right of Kings, and his 
career affords a strong argument that they should be 
always at the head of the Church ! 

For the first twenty years of his reign the Tower 
was filled with Protestants, for the next ten with Papists, 
and for the remainder the Reformers bowed beneath 
the arch of the " Bloody Tower." 

With all the above various classes Folly assumes a 



THE CRY OF THE PELICAN. 1 5 

serious garb and name, and changes her bells and 
trinkets, for axes and fagots and crosiers, the garb of 
the philosopher, the crown of the monarch, the triple 
tiara, the cowl of the priest, the gown of the zealot. 

She calls herself faith or zeal. Shunning the investi- 
gation of truth, glorying in dogmatism, she it was that 
raised the cross on Calvary, lighted the fagots of Nero, 
and let loose the tigers of Diocletian ; in another place 
she rolls the car of Juggernaut, burns the widow at the 
pyre, and sacrifices the slave to the manes of the master. 

She held the poison cup to Socrates, and chained 
Luther and Galileo ; she led Cranmer, Ridley, and 
Latimer to their doom at London, Servetus at Geneva, 
and Savonarola at Florence ; she persecuted the Lol- 
lards in the 15th, and the Hugenots in the 16th cen- 
tury ; hung the witches at Salem, and the Quakers at 
Boston. She it is that shackles Truth and feeds False- 
hood, upholds crime and aids oppression, that from dread 
of change persists in error ; that would rather stagnate 
and petrify in the rock than seek Truth and soar with 
her to celestial spheres. 

Folly's part is as a general thing less bloody, now, to 
the eye — but she is with us still in manifold shapes, 
some of them terrible, some mischievous, some merely 
absurd. 

What wonder is it that the Pelican has cried, and 
still cries in the wilderness as his eye travels over the 
arid wastes. 

I avail myself of the privilege, which I have as a human 
being, to raise my voice even like a Pelican in the wilder- 
ness, and give utterance to some few discursive sounds. 



LICENSED THROAT-CUTTING. 



Observe that ant hill ! Those creatures have, by 
nature, a limited span of life — and man and beast unite 
to destroy them. 

Yet, after erecting their habitations with a marvellous 
labor and skill do they, by rending each other, seek to 
abbreviate their natural span, and anticipate the ravages 
of man and beast. Contemplating our aiit hill, as might 
some angel from a far-off eyrie ; or, indeed, our " man 
in the moon," " I see," he muses, " beings constructed 
with an intricate and harmonious machinery of exist- 
ence, on the well-being of which depends their condition 
physical and mental ; I see them gifted with reasoning 
power, with kindly sympathies, with apprehensive 
faculties for distinguishing good and evil, and a strong 
instinct of self-preservation ; I see them striving, and 
working, unceasingly, to prolong and beatify their ex- 
istence, amid the various risks and in the varied con- 
ditions where they are placed. I see them comforting, 
aiding, soothing, and nourishing, each other, seeking to 
protect each other from pain, from injury, from disease 
and death ; and yet, either singly or in large numbers ; 
they never cease to rend, to maim — nay they seek 
utterly to destroy each other." " How incongruous ! 
how illogical ! how absurd ! " would naturally exclaim 
the observer aforesaid. 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 1 7 

The great standing miracle of nature is human life. 
Life — whether donated to Man originally, as a dominant 
and perfected genus, or whether it has crawled out of 
an amorphus protoplasm, through numerous evolutions 
into his present perfected frame-work, is a wonderful 
and awful condition. A mysterious spark binds together 
the great confederation of soul, and body — it binds 
action, motion, thought ; it keeps from decay what is 
without it perishable. Without it the body falls a clod ; 
the soul escapes and returns to the animus mundi. — 
Whence it comes, is a mystery, whence it goes is a 
mystery, how it acts is a mystery beyond the human 
fathom line. — Once gone there is finality to the senses, 
observation ceases and science is dumb. 

How this life is coddled, and nursed, and watched, 
and guarded, and treasured, in and by itself and by 
others ! What apprehensions for its safety. — What 
grief when it trembles in the socket ; what despair and 
desolation when it goes out, even naturally, under the 
general doom ! 

There are schools and colleges set apart to instruct 
those who will be specially skilled to preserve it. There 
will be learned leeches and anatomists to devise theories 
and practices therefor. 

There is an army of them, from Hippocrates and 
Galenus down. They will study and ponder and reason 
together how to keep off the grim reaper ; how to 
comfort, to heal, to sooth, to assuage. Chemistry, 
Botany, Microscopy, Astrology, the true and the false 
sciences and the hand maid arts are called in. The 
bowels of the earth, the dim recesses of the sea, the 



1 8 PELICAN PAPERS. 

secret haunts of nature will be ransacked for remedies, 
for palliatives, for detergents, for panaceas and placebos. 

Ingenious men will invent, and skillful men will make 
instruments of divers shape and device to assist in the 
preservation. 

There will be a ceaseless fight with the remorseless 
forces of nature, with the insidious germ-cell, with the 
poisonous miasma, with the thunder-cloud, the whirl- 
wind, the earthquake ; with the powers of fire, and air, 
and water. There will be war with the lower creation. 
A war to destroy them that may be hurtful — a war to 
seize those that may nourish. 

Men and women will dig, and plough, and reap, and 
spin to sustain, to foster, pamper, and preserve this 
mysterious thing, so precious, so cherished, so fragile, 
and so fleeting. There will be also invocation, preca- 
tion, and deprecation made to gods, and idols, and saints 
and demons — each for its time; to Esculapius and 
Hygeia ; to the sole God and to the multiform divinity ; 
to Indra, to Isis, and to Elohim ; to Vishnu the preser- 
ver, and to Siva the destroyer. There will be prayers 
offered, sacrifices made, wheels turned, and beads told, 
to spirits of good, and spirits of evil, to Ormuzd, and 
to Ahriman, to the left eye tooth of Buddah, to the 
blood of St. Januarius, to Diana of Ephesus, to our 
lady of Lourdes or Loretto, and even to Abadonna, 
the devil ; — all this to ward off the blow and preserve 
the spark. 

And yet, per contra, — mark me now the contrasting 
folly — and yet, there are untold thousands studying art 
and science for the destruction of this same vital spark ; 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 1 9 

how most quickly, effectually, and extensively, to make 
the great severance. There are the fabricators of 
swords, and daggers, and guns ; the casters of multi- 
form cannon, and the makers of compounds and engines 
of varied kinds for destruction ; the builders of vessels 
of war and forts and terrible machines for sudden and 
wide spread slaughter. 

The herdsman will leave his flock, the husbandman 
the field, the artisan his useful toil, to learn the art of 
slaying his fellows with whom he hath no quarrel. 
Good and wise men will lead and teach them how best 
to slaughter — men that are gentle of spirit and other- 
wise, mayhap, philanthropical. Books will be written, 
pious men will pray, geniuses will think and study and 
plot, how best to do it. Opposing hosts of aggregate 
humanity will be massed, and reap each other down like 
grain. 

They will cut, stab, and shoot, to the death ; the 
music will sound, the flags will wave, heads and limbs 
will fly off, blood will saturate the earth. Heroes will 
be crowned and beauty will smile. The great Moloch 
of war will cry ha ! ha ! ever insatiate. — And so the 
devilish game from age to age goes on. To what end, 
ponders the philosophic observer, with a broad vision 
that ranges humanity, what is the controlling motive 
of all this diablerie, this licensed throat-cutting. 

Sometimes, self-defence is urged, sometimes protec- 
tion of the oppressed. Good reasons enough, when 
not pretenses, but only good reason on the one side ; 
and yet not good reasons in the philosophic light. The 
dominant causes, the causes causantes, will be found to 



20 PELICAN PAPERS. 

be ambition, greed, fear, ' blood-thirstiness, jealousy. 

These will often put on masks and call themselves by 
the names of " national honor," or " national interest," 
or "patriotism," and clamor loudly under those names. 
" The balance of power must be kept up," say the old 
state grandees, wagging their heads. — " Utopia is get- 
ting too pretentious," mumbles another. " We must 
turn the mind of the people by a popular war," says 
the sagacious plotter, the future despot. — " We are 
getting rusty," says invalided Field-marshal Blunder. 
" The nation pants for glory," murmurs the young 
duke in his opening speech amid surrounding cheers. 
"If we do not take sides in this matter our prestige is 
gone forever," harangues a budding statesman, talking 
for the newspapers. 

" Good G ! " is the American eagle, or the British 

lion, or the Gallic cock, or the Russian bear, or the 
Northern vulture, or the Southern jackal, or the Ger- 
man spatch-cock, or whatever the national bird or beast 
maybe, "to be bullied in this way?" stammer the 
ancient Illuminati, over their wine at the clubs. — Some- 
times they blunder into it. 

A certain king, it is said, sent to another king, say- 
ing: "send me a blue pig with a black tail, or else — " 
The other, in high dudgeon at the presumed insult, 
replied : " I have not got one and if I had — ." On 
this weighty cause they went to war for many years. 

After a satiety of glories and miseries they finally 
bethought them that, as their armies and resources 
were exhausted and their kingdoms mutually laid waste, 
it might be well enough to consult about the prelim- 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 21 

inaries of peace ; but before this could be concluded, 
a diplomatic explanation was first needed of the insult- 
ing lauguage which formed the ground of the quarrel. 
" What could you mean," asked the second king of the 
first, " by saying ' send me a blue pig with a black tail, 
or else — ?' " "Why," said the first, " I meant a blue 
pig with a black tail, or else some other color ; but," 
retorted he, " what could you mean by saying, ' I have 
not got one, and if I had — ? ' " Why, of course, if I 
had, I should have sent it ; " an explanation which 
was entirely satisfactory, and peace was concluded 
accordingly. 

Swift, the satirical observer, has painted this business. 
" Sometime the quarrel between two princes is to de- 
cide which of them shall dispossess a third of his 
dominions where neither of them pretend to any right ; 
sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the 
other should quarrel with him ; sometimes a war is 
entered upon because the enemy is too strong ; and 
sometimes because he is weak ; sometimes our neigh- 
bors want the things which we have, or have the things 
which we want, and we both fight till they have ours or 
give us theirs." 

" If a prince sends forces into a nation where the 
people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half 
of them to death and make slaves of the rest in order 
to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of 
living. It is a very kingly, honorable, and frequent 
practice where one prince requires the assistance of 
another to secure him against an invasion, that the 
assistant when he has driven out the invader should 



22 PELICAN PAPERS. 

seize on the dominions himself and kill, imprison or 
banish the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by blood 
or marriage is a frequent cause of war between princes 
and the nearer the kindred is, the greater the disposi- 
tion to quarrel ; poor nations are hungry and rich nations 
are proud ; and pride and hunger will ever be at 
variance." 

" For these reasons the trade of a soldier is held the 
most honorable of all others, because a soldier is a 
Yahoo hired to kill, in cold blood, as many of his own 
species who have never offended him as he possibly 
can." 

When the war hue and cry has been started, the press, 
perhaps paid for it, develop the idea and fan the flame. 
Young Witherum has done it for a dollar a column. 
Meetings are instigated by speculators in guns, powder, 
and grain, and soon there is a " popular " war ! That 
means, analyzed into its products, maiming, crippling, 
deformity, sickness, misery, death, poverty, mourning, 
and individual and general demoralization. Now the 
above specified propagators of this business are not the 
fighters ; they are non-combatants — they are merely 
the promovents and motors ; they send off the victims ; 
they get their glory by proxy. " The soldiers fight but 
the kings are heroes," says the Talmud. " The hapless 
soldiers sigh runs, in blood, down palace walls," says 
another. At their hearths, clubs and bureaus the direc- 
tors read complacently such dispatches as these. What 
matter if they sicken the heart and curdle the blood of 
the inferior instruments and their kin ? 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 23 

Putine, January 2d. 

" Yesterday between three and four thousand prisoners 
passed through here with a guard. They were the per- 
sonification of abject misery, badly clothed, and nearly 
fifty per centum suffering from frost bite. Great num- 
bers fell out on the way and laid down in the snow and 
died, and the dogs and hogs are now eating them, as I 
have seen with my own eyes. 

" The guards, who are well clothed, and, of course, 
more regularly fed than the wretched prisoners, treat 
them with great harshness. 

" I have seen them beating the poor creatures for no 
other reason than that they could not march further, 
and nearly all who had money complain of having been 
robbed by their escort. 

" An attack on T , simultaneously with the cap- 
ture of D on the 24th ult., was repulsed with the 

loss of a thousand men. 

" The loss at D was three thousand men. Every 

brigade and regimental commander was killed or 
wounded ; and as nearly all the officers of the guards 
are personally known at headquarters, the fact that two 
hundred officers have been placed hors de combat has 
cast a deep gloom over the members of the staff." 



THE WAR. 



" On Monday, the 24th, the great fortress of was 

stormed after a three months' seige. The enemy pre- 
cipitately fled down the northern slope. Our losses are 



24 PELICAN PAPERS. 

great, that of the enemy was near 10,000. The villages 
were filled with the refugees from the plains within a 
circuit of ten miles ; many in a dying condition from 
famine and exposure." 

" Upwards of 5,000 bodies were buried in great pits to 
prevent pestilence, half of whom were women and 
children." 

" Every village from here to the Garascha is deserted. 
Most of them have been burnt and the crops destroyed. 
Our cavalry have done their duty nobly in raiding and 
devastating the country between the two rivers. Yes- 
terday we buried Field Marshal Redsbloodt, and three 
of his staff; the hospitals are full of our wounded ; the 
enemy's wounded have been turned into the market 
place where they are dying like sheep. The weather 
continues severe." 

" Prince Max, and Prince Tax, have arrived to-day. 
They have issued congratulatory orders to our troops, 
and decorated General Petard, with the order of the 
Iron Jaw. The straggling army of the enemy is now 
in retreat over the Nemnems. Their path in the snow 
of the pass is* marked with blood and strewn with the 
wounded and dead." 

" General Houndt is following them briskly, and three 
villages have been sacked : the women and children and 
old men were massacred except some who escaped to 
the mountains, which are still covered with snow." 



A wag has thus written of the battle of Bunker Hill, 
looking down, philosophically, from the monument there. 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 25 

*' Does a war ever punish the guilty ? 

" Did the American soldiers on the day of Bunker Hill 
punish men who had instigated the war ? No ; except 
indirectly or slightly ; but they punished a thousand 
ignorant and comparatively guiltless soldiers. Many of 
them had been conscripted or enticed into the army by 
false promises, but when once there they were compelled 
to do their master's cruel work, even though it were to 
kill their own fathers or brothers. On the day referred 
to, some of them were driven to attack the Americans 
at the point of the sword in the hands of the officers. 
These are the men whom the Americans punished, and 
over whose wounds and death they have exulted for a 
century, and built a monument to commemorate the 
event — men who, by becoming soldiers, became slaves 
or the mere tools of their masters, and fought our 
countrymen, not because they bore them any special 
ill will, but because they were forced to do it." 

'■ But these soldiers were not the only ones whom they 
punished, though they still failed to reach those who 
deserved it. The 1,000 dead or wounded soldiers who 
suffered at Bunker Hill were connected with 1,000 
homes and families across the water, into which the 
tidings of that bloody June day carried sorrow and 
mourning." 

" There were wives in those families who had been 
made widows, and children who had been orphaned. 
There were parents whose only sons, the hope of their 
declining years, had been sacrificed on the battle field. 
And while there was mourning in a thousand cottages, 
king, ministers and members of parliament were person- 



26 PELICAN PAPERS. 

ally unharmed and planning for still greater sacrifices 
of victims to Moloch. We ask again, who had the 
Americans punished ? " 

The Pall Mall Gazette published a letter written to 
" My dear, good mother," by a soldier of the Arch- 
duke Joseph's regiment of infantry, printed in the 
" Pesther Lloyd : " " Following in pursuit of the 
enemy " (after the battle at Glasinatz), " we arrived at 
a large isolated house. We broke open the door and 
rushed in. Inside we found two men and a number of 
women ; continuing our search we discovered two 
muskets ; this sufficed for us to at once cut down the 
men. Our lieutenant then gave us permission to 
plunder. I, for my part, at once looked about for gold 
and silver ornaments, and succeeded in finding some 
gold and silver coins, as well as some paper money. In 
one room of the house a large amount of linen, skins, 
furs, &c, were piled up, and every one helped himself 
to what he liked best." 

" I took some silk handkerchiefs, four red caps, twenty 
eggs, bread, and a pound or two of butter. All the 
women had run together in one room,. We found them 
out, and as we were curious to see what Turkish women 
were like we tore the veils off their faces. As I was 
searching about the house I saw some of the Hungarian 
soldiers cleverly pulling the rings off the fingers and 
the ornaments out of the ears of the women. Some 
of them, also, tore the bodices off the women because 
they were richly embroidered with gold. After we had 
wrecked the house we were going to set it on fire, but 
we did not, because somebody said that we had better 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 27 

leave it for our comrades following us to finish plundering 
it. A second house we came to soon afterward, we 
treated in the same way." 

The above humorous letter was written by a waggish 
Austrian soldier who was with a corps taking peaceable 
occupation of Bosnia under the terms of a general 
European treaty ; peaceable, mind you, for the war was 
finished; this illustrates another phase of this business. 

It is a curious commentary on this advanced age that 
he who has the highest honor, the most conspicuous 
and elevated position in any land, be it barbarian or 
civilized, is he who has been the most successful slayer 
of his fellow men. 

The great general far outranks the great humanitarian. 
The phosphorescent emanations from slaughtered hu- 
manity arise and make a halo about his head. Let him 
cut a throat without a license and he is hung ; let him 
cut them ad libitum with a license, signed mayhap by a 
half-witted fellow in power, and he is a hero — he glitters 
through the pages of history ; he is asked to take the 
reins of state. He has honor, glory, power ! 

Little Flavus was the youngest child and only boy 
of intellectual and moral parents. He was lovely in 
character, disposition and body ; his blue eyes sparkled 
with joy and life, his cheeks were rosy with health and 
his blonde hair curled about his delicious little face and 
head, making a bright frame-work to a lovely picture. 
He loved every body and every body loved him — he 
grew up just the same, boy, youth and young man, 
gentle, kind, loving, deferential, sympathetic. His 
mother's eyes filled with proud tears as she gazed on 



28 PELICAN PAPERS. 

him ; and thanked God for the boon. The father gave 
most of his life, and care, and thought to him. Flavus 
bore his honored name and would still honor it ; he 
would be great as well as good. He was trained and 
educated with an ever-watchful care. Two sisters 
looked to Flavus as their ideal. A gentle being of a 
neighboring family had received Flavus' preference, and 
blessed the future as a coming life. 

Flavus was put into the army ; Flavus must needs 
be a young man of figure like the rest. The world and 
his social position required it. He had no great taste 
for guns and swords ; he was fond of books, his mind 
was reflective, his tastes were studious, his feelings were 
against force and outrage, his motives philanthropic, his 
heart was sympathetic with distress and sorrow. Flavus 
became a lieutenant, then a captain ; he moved about 
for a time in a uniform, with a listless feeling, hoping 
in time to shake off the listlessness or the uniform. 

The war broke out. The occasion was obscure — the 
reason not obvious — the justice doubtful. A writer of 
the time deprecating it, spoke of it thus : " The blind 
fanaticism which calls evil good and good evil, and 
which includes something besides self in the scope of 
its desire, is less ignoble than the cynical indifference 
which accepts war and all its honors without watching 
or caring how lie the weights in the scale of justice." 

But the war feeling grew. The ministers wanted 
to be popular and led the clamor. And so the 
army marched away, amid the waving of flags and 
handkerchiefs, and the salutes of guns. There were 
more smiles than tears, and little children and big 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 29 

children clapped their hands at the show. Major 
General and Field Marshal Powderhorn swept by with 
a glittering staff — horses prancing and sabres glistening. 
The young officers held up their heads grandly, and 
tickled their coursers' sides. The big guns rumbled 
over the pavement. John Jones' the private's wife, 
marched proudly by his side with her little boy soon to 
be an orphan. That old reprobate, Col. McFleecer, 
was glad to escape from his debts, and glittered at the 
head of his Meniskillers in his unpaid-for uniform. 
Bob Shorty, the lieutenant, thought it was a splendid 
"job," and marched gaily between the lines, past the 
De Pride's house and waved his sword to Miss Julia's 
blue eyes as he passed at the double quick. " Left, left, 
left, LEFT," shouted, crescendo, Captain Bolster, swelling 
with coming glory, as he whirled his men around the 
corner ; while, at the end of the file stood, keeping tread, 
Williams, the new corporal, whose young bride followed 
weeping on the side-walk. Rub-a-dub, Dub, DUB ! ! 
rolled the drum corps to the twirl of the cane of the 
gorgeous major. Now come the line, the rank and file of 
victims — thousands of bayonets flashing in the morning 
sun. 

One man has left behind a family dependent on him ; 
another's mother sits weeping by the hearth ; 
another's heart swells as he thinks of one whose por- 
trait is around his neck ; another is an outcast, who goes 
to the war to rob and murder ; another has bidden 
farewell to orphan sisters who wail at home in agony 
and who will wail louder still. They all have weapons 
in their hands to destroy those they have never seen, 



30 PELICAN PAPERS. 

and who are marching on a like mission. Few know 
the cause of the war. 

At the end of the gay procession ride two tall, thin 
figures clad in sweeping horseman cloaks, their faces 
semi-muffled — one rides a white horse, the other a 
black. One horseman seems deadly pale — the other 
grim and swarthy — his black eyes gleam out from under 
his visor. One looks neither to the right or to the left, 
but moves on steadily. The one on the black horse 
moves restlessly, his horse prancing, his eyes seem to 
gaze all around and pierce everywhere. 

" Who are they ? " cries a young girl with a shudder, 
clinging to her father's arm. " They are physicians, I 
think," responds he. He was wrong ; they were men 
of a higher rank — one was King Death, the other the 
Prince of Devils ! As the procession swung around 
the corner there was a laugh louder than the roll of the 
tambours. It was that of the man on the black horse ! 

The scene changes. Clang, clang — bang, bang — whack, 
whack — bourn, bourn. "At them my hearties ! pulverize 
them ! cut them ! shoot them ! charge them ! down with 
them ! — the villians ! the rascals ! — Pick them off, sharp- 
shooters ! slash them, hussars and cuirassiers ! bayonet 
them, grenadiers ! annihilate them, bombardiers and 
cannoneers ! Follow, follow ! drive them over the 
mountains, down the valleys, scour the plains, wave, 
wave the flag, sound the trump, Victory ! Victory ! " 
Put it all in the papers. Your country thanks you, 
gentlemen, Give them all medals ; promote the Cap- 
tain ! Give the Colonel more gold buttons, and dub 
the General, Marshal / 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 3 1 

A correspondent from the seat of war writes that, 
" The sanitary commission have arrived at the scene of 
the late battle. They found 1,000 corpses buried two 
feet under the ground, frozen but not decomposed. 
The commission are deliberating whether to cremate 
the corpses or use quick lime." 

Flavus was one of that 1,000. They did not even 
get his bones — a vulture picked them ! Two stricken 
parents daily totter to a marble column. A young 
woman faded and died in early youth — she had acute 
sensibilities ; they ate her young life like a cannibal. 

But his death was glorious. "Glorious, poor fellow ! " 
said, after dinner, over his wine, the second cousin who 
succeeded to the estates. This was the obituary. 

In the system of the duello there is a gleam of reason 
and sense, Those that have personal acrimony or a 
grievance are pitted personally against the offensive or 
offending individual. There is no fighting by proxy 
there ; it would be cowardice to urge it. And yet the 
duello is punished as a crime ; and he that might therein 
slay his adversary, even unwittingly, is by law a mur- 
derer. Let him slay an adversary, intentionally, in 
battle, however, without any personal grievance against 
him, but because he hires himself to do it, and he is a 
hero justified by the law of God and man. "Ita scripta 
est." "Risum teneatis, amici? " 

The French laughing philosopher in his " Vision of 
Babouc " has well satirized the intelligence which actu- 
ates the licensed throat-cutter. 

" Babouc mounted his camel and set out with his 
attendants. After several days journey, he met near 



32 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the plains of Senaar, the Persian army which was going 
to battle against the Indian army. He first spoke to a 
soldier whom he met marching apart from the others, 
and inquired of him what was the occasion of the war. 
' By all the gods,' responded the soldier, 'I know nothing 
about it. It 's none of my business. My business is 
to kill and be killed for a livelihood. I don't care whom 
I serve. I might even to-morrow go over to the Indian 
camp, for, it is said, that they give nearly a half a cop- 
per a day to their soldiers more than we receive in the 
cursed Persian service. If you want to know what we 
are fighting about ask the Captain.' Babouc having 
given a little douceur to the soldier, went into the camp ; 
he soon made the acquaintance of the Captain, and 
asked what was the object of the war. ' How do you 
suppose I know,' said the Captain, ' and what do I care 
■ebout such a fine subject ? I live two leagues from Per- 
sepolis ; I hear that war is declared ; I immediately 
leave my family and I go to seek, according to our cus- 
tom, fortune or death ; particularly as I have nothing 
else to do.' ' But your comrades,' said Babouc, ' are 
they not better informed than you ? ' ' No,' said the 
Captain, ' nobody but our principal satraps know pre 
cisely why we are cutting each others throats.' ' 

" Babouc, being introduced to the staff, became at 
home with them, and one of them informed him as 
follows : ' The cause of this war,' said he, which has 
desolated India for twenty years, arises from a dispute 
between a eunuch of the grand king of Persia's women 
and a clerk in the cabinet of the grand king of the 
Indies. The question was about a duty which amount- 



LICENSED THROAT CUTTING. 33 

ed to about the thirtieth part of a daric. Our prime 
minister and the prime minister of the Indies sustained 
the dignity of their respective masters. The Generals 
got warm on either side, an army of a million of sol- 
diers was put in the field, these armies have both annu- 
ally recruited to the extent of 400,000 men. Murders, 
incendiarism, ruin and devastation daily increase. The 
whole universe suffers and the slaughter goes on. Our 
prime minister and he of the Indies both often protest 
that they are only acting for the benefit of the human 
race ; and at each protestation there are always cities 
destroyed and provinces laid waste." 

" Deliver me, O Lord ! from they that imagine 
mischief in their heart ; continually are they gathered 
together for war ! " 

Thus prayed good King David, and yet he received 
celestial assistance in his continual fights and throat- 
cuttings with the Canaanites, the Amalekites, the Am- 
orites, the Perizzites, the Hittites, and the Girgashites ; 
and this exemplary potentate on one of his excursions, 
" saved neither man nor woman alive." On another, 
he put all the people of the conquered cities of the 
Amorites " under saws, and under harrows of iron, and 
under axes of iron, and made Ihem pass through the 
brick kiln." This, I confess, is puzzling! 

Are we indeed as ants, and do the heavenly powers 
encourage licensed throat-cutting ? 

Now, I have no remedy fcr all this thing, I am not 
prepared to offer a substitute. High civilization re- 
quires it all, doubtless. I am looking at it not in a 
political, bnt in an anthropological sense. I only say 



34 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the whole thing is queer. One man wields the sword, 
the other the lancet. The people are taxed that the 
rulers may maintain a host of licensed homicides to cut 
other people's throats. The philosopher laughs over 
it — so does Mephistophiles. 

Let us close this homily with a few lines from the 
rhyming observer, Byron : 

" There shall they rot — Ambition's honored fools ; 

Yes, Honor decks the turf that wraps their clay ; 

Vain sophistry ! in these behold the tools, 

The broken tools that tyrants cast away 

By myriads, where they dare to pave their way 

With human hearts — to what ? A dream alone,— 

Can despots compass all that hails their sway ? 

Or call, with truth, one span of earth their own, 

Save that wherein at last they crumble, bone by bone ?" 



TRAMPING. 



Legitimate tramping has reference to moving under 
the blue canopy, studying nature, avoiding the jostlings 
of congregated humanity, and special enjoyment of the 
present. It involves independence, and simplicity. In 
itself it is harmless, and commends itself to the philos- 
opher and poet ; if general, however, the world would 
doubtless relapse into vagabondism. 

Well, suppose the world did ? would it, would the av- 
erage member of the human family be any the worse? 

The car of Civilization has been steadily rolling on : 
are not the victims crushed beneath its wheels as nu- 
merous as those who erst while fell, in barbaric time, 
under club and spear? Is the average human enjoy- 
ment greater ? Is average family life better, so far as 
its health needs and desires go, in houses than in huts 
and tents ? Was Solomon any happier than Abraham ; 
did not his cares counterbalance his possessions ; did 
not his very wisdom make him susceptible to new forms 
of discomfort ; did not his very appreciation of folly 
make him miserable ? 

Is my gouty, asthmatic friend Roubles, superannua- 
ted at 50, any happier, with all his money and civiliza- 
tion, than " Little Wolf," the buffalo-hunting Chey- 
enne, of the same age, as free as an eagle, and as fresh 
as a boy ? 



$6 PELICAN PAPERS. 

Would not Jobson, with a scolding wife, harassed by 
creditors, and tortured by a torpid liver, willingly ex- 
change places' with Selim Ben Hadad the Arab scheik? 
or even with Mangas-tonto, the Comanche warrior, 
ranging at will over 60,000 square miles of territory and 
defying the civilization north and south of him ? 

But, says the optimist, there are, by civilization, new 
devices for enjoyment, new palliatives for ills, new care 
for the afflicted, increased developement of the intel- 
lectual and a higher culture of the moral faculties, new 
sensibilities aroused, new and enlarged sympathy be- 
stowed. 

" But the poison," answers the Tramp, " has come 
with the antidote, and your new sources of enjoyment 
were formerly not missed or desired because unknown. 
Simplicity and nature had then no craving for artifice 
or art ; your nervous system had then no fine strings 
jarred by every passing tou ch ; your sublimated ideas, 
your refined tastes, your keen emotions and intellectu- 
al developements, the children of civilization bring with 
them an increasing brood of desires, cares, anxieties, 
disappointments. Your new palliatives for ills have 
only been introduced because of new ills ; your cares 
for the unfortunate, your sensibilities and sympathies 
for the distressed have only been aroused and develop- 
ed because of the distress, want, and misfortune that 
has been produced. Your new medicaments are not 
blessings in view of the new evils they are invented 
to cure. 

" Is there less blood shed amid civilization ; is there 
less disease and hunger ; is there less deformity of body; 



TRAMPING. 37 

is there less corporeal pain and suffering? — Has not 
civilization with its new appliances, wants and cares, 
increased the faculty and enlarged the extent of human 
suffering?" 

" Has it not multiplied means of slaughter and de- 
veloped- facilities for spreading destruction, without 
checking the thirst for blood ? Do not men now fight 
on quibbles, where formerly they fought to defend life 
or property? do not nations spill their heart's blood on 
abstruse questions of policy or national honor before un- 
known? Ethically speaking, is there less selfishness 
and immorality now than then ? do not people grab 
your and my property as thoroughly and more largely 
by indirect processes, under cover of law and respecta- 
bility, and as effectually, if not as flagrantly, as of old 
did the barbarian or the savage? " 

" Is there more contentment since your increased 
means of locomotion and facilities of intercourse? 
Have they not produced restlessness and dissatisfac- 
tion — a continual desire to move and a want of appre- 
ciation and enjoyment of one's station and surround- 
ings? " 

" Do not the annals of your cities and settlements 
teem with the records of suicides ; — men, who, by their 
self-inflicted doom have charged life with delusion and 
civilization with failure ? Did you ever hear of a sav- 
age or barbarian commiting suicide ? Witness a recent 
case in the annals of one of our great hot-beds of civi- 
lization called cities. 

It is an extract from a morning journal, and a terri- 
ble piece of realism." 



38 PELICAN PAPERS. 



" Boarders at 500 West Twenty-second Street heard 
Howland Nevins walking in his room late on Monday- 
night. They remembered that he had threatened to 
kill himself, and so rapped at his door. He readily ad- 
mitted them, and his composed manner was disconcert- 
ing ; for they hardly knew how to excuse the intrusion : 
but he relieved the awkwardness of the situation by 
saying that he was glad to see them, as probably it was 
for the last time. ' He had seen all the trouble he want- 
ed to,' he continued calmly, ' and was going to escape 
from any more, having just taken something that would 
put him to rest forever.' He pointed to an empty bot- 
tle that had contained laudanum. The boarders sent 
for Dr. Thos. Hodges, to whom Nevins reported that 
he had poisoned himself. The physican tried to induce 
him to take an antidote. ' No ! ' he said : ' I have made 
up my mind to die, and I am going to.' He sat upon 
the sofa, fully dressed, and nobody but the physicians 
could detect the effect of the drug. An emetic and 
stomach-pump were suggested, but the young man firm- 
ly declined to have anything to do with either. 

" ' You may watch me all you waut to, doctor,' he 
said, • but if you attempt to do anything to me I '11 or- 
der you out, and if you dont go one way you '11 go an- 
other. This is my room, and I have a right to do as I 
like in it ; and it is only through courtesy I allow any 
of you gentlemen to remain. If you are curious to see 
a man die you can stay so long as you don't interfere 
with me.' 



TRAMPING. 39 

" The boarders argued to induce him to submit to 
treatment ; they spoke of his duty to his widowed 
mother, but he was unmoved. His mother, who is in 
feeble health, had not been called from her room, and 
was ignorant of what was going on. To the strongest 
appeals Nevins replied, ' My life is my own to do as I 
please with, and I propose to take it ; it is no pleasure 
for me to live.' 

" After watching beside the patient three-quarters of 
an hour, and being assured, both by the young man 
himself and by circumstantial evidence, that nearly two 
hours had elapsed since he had taken the poison, the 
physician concluded that the dose had been either too 
little or too big to affect him seriously, and that he 
would recover without assistance. So he said to Nev- 
ins, ' I guess you '11 come out all right after all.' 

" ' I hope not,' was the reply. ' I calculated the quan- 
tity very accurately, and I shall be disappointed if I am 
not successful ; what 's the difference, anyway ? there'll 
only be one fool less in the world. By the way, doctor, 
I 've a notion to bequeath my body to you, and let you 
see if you can find any brains in my head.' 

" This levity increased the impression that his condi- 
tion was not so serious as had been thought. Dr. 
Hodges said to him, as he started to leave the room, 
' If you get over this all right I wish you would come 
and see me, perhaps a little visit will do us both good.' 

' All right, thankyou, Doctor.' Nevins said as he re- 
ceived the Doctor's card. ' I 'd like to call around for 
an evening, if you 've plenty of brandy and soda, but 
I dont believe you '11 ever see me.' 



40 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" At this he arose and shook hands with the physi- 
cian, who went down stairs, and would have gone from 
the house had not one of the men begged him to re- 
main in the parlor for a while, until it could be seen how 
Nevins acted when left alone. 

" Nevins walked to and fro in his room several times 
but maintaieed his quiet, determined manner until a few 
minutes after 2 o'clock, when he suddenly collapsed. 
The two ounces and a half of laudanum that he had 
swallowed seemed to exert their influence in an instant. 
Dr. Hodges was hastily recalled ; he did all in his pow- 
er to remove or counteract the poison ; the use of the 
stomach-pump showed that the drug had all been ab- 
sorbed from the stomach. Hyperdermic injections and 
other measures were resorted to ; finally, the dying man 
was kept alive for awhile by artificial respiration ; at 
4.45 o'clock life was extinct." 

" If that young man had been a nature-loving, wan- 
dering tramp or robust savage, or an Arab, flying about 
the desert, he would not have committed suicide. Civ- 
ilization with its absurd habits and exactions killed 
him." 

" I also refer you to the case of John H. Green. 

" John H. Green committed suicide by hanging him- 
self with a clothes-line in the bedroom of his residence. 
Mr. Green was in rather reduced circumstances, and for 
some time has been much worried , to be prepared to 
resist any attempt on the part of his landlord to eject 
him from the premises during the night. Mr. Green had 
invariably gone to bed with his clothes on for three 
weeks. He, also, usually put his cane near the head 



TRAMPING. 41 

of his bed, with the remark to his wife, that if anyone 
attempted to put them out of the house he would 
defend her with his life." 

"His landlord, hearing of Mr. Green's mental troub- 
les, tried to dispel them by telling him that he could 
live there as long as he wished, and that his rent was 
paid months in advance. Still Mr. Green brooded over 
his misfortunes. At 10 o'clock yesterday morning he 
went into the room used as a bedroom, while his wife 
was busy, and she did not notice his absence until about 
two hours afterward, when, she went into the bed- 
room and found him hanging by the neck, dead." 

" He had procured a clothes-line, and throwing one 
end over a closet door, shut it, thus holding the rope 
firmly in its place. He then made a noose in the other 
end, which he placed around his neck, and throwing 
himself forward in a kneeling position, so that the full 
weight of his body came upon the rope, succeeded in 
strangling himself to death." 

" Now," moralized the tramp, " if Mr. Green had had 
no home and no landlord, he would not have been 
afraid of being turned out of his house. If he had trav- 
elled with his own tent or slept on hay-stacks he would 
not have been a miserable suicide." 

" There is," he continued, " respectable precedent for 
tramping. The early patriarchs were tramps — Abra- 
ham was not only a tramp, but under the laws of Mon- 
grelia he would be legally known as a ' Squatter.' He 
certainly was a vagabundus, which literally means 
nothing more or less than a wanderer, and had, origin- 
ally, no depreciatory signification. So was the patriarch 



42 PELICAN PAPERS. 

Jacob a tramp ; yet he rather disgraced the profession by 
divers tricks that would not pass master, now. Turning 
to the New Testament, we find the Apostles were fully 
instructed to ' take nothing for their journey, neither 
staves nor scrip, neither bread nor money ; ' neither 
were they to have two cents apiece, nor abide in any 
house." 

" Aristotle and his peripatetic philosophers were also 
professed walkers, and taught and learned, while tramp- 
ing. There appears to be nothing evil or villainous in 
tramping, per se. Of course it may be abused." 

" In itself it is natural, healthful, independent and 
proper. The tramper may properly say to the world- 
ling : ' Do not tramp if you do not like it, but do not 
howl, as you do, at a man who is content with little, who 
takes his staff and trudges the highways, confident in 
his manhood.' " 

" Why, a man who is merely fond of wandering, who 
is disinclined to be fossilized in a locality, who loves 
nature and freedom, should be characterized in the 
criminal codes as a ' vagrant,' and punishable as such, 
seems contrary to justice as well as scripture. 

"Wealthy people are allowed to wander by their 
vehicles and by various traveling media. They circum- 
navigate the globe and are lauded for it. Why, then, 
should not the pure vagabundus enjoy his tramp on the 
streets and highways of the world?" 

" Look at the physical difference between a man that 
tramps in the open air, nay, between a savage and the 
forced children of civilization. Look at the average 
human of our great cities. Of course, there are fair ex- 



TRAMPING. 43 

ceptions, but, as a general rule, the average highly- 
civilized human being is now a miserable looking object, 
greatly degenerate, doubtless, from the original type ; 
and even from the nomadic, open-air type of the mod- 
ern day. Look at a throng of both sexes coming out 
from some place of concourse : observe them, one by 
one — look at the pallor, the deformity, the decrepitude, 
the distortion, the diseased aspect, the premature age, 
the sinister, mean, jagged, narrow, swinish, cunning, 
moribund, felonious, diabolical expressions of phisiog- 
nomy ; the diminished stature, the angular, gibbous, 
warped, withered or bloated figures ; the weakened 
frames, the shackled nerves, and the flabby muscles, — 
The average civilized being begins to rot, almost from 
his infancy. Compare him in beauty with a lion, a 
tiger, a horse, a dog, or almost any other animal, each 
after his kind, with graceful shapes, glossy skin, 
brilliant eyes, agile movement, and natural expression : 
at any rate, if not beautiful in lines and color, at least so 
in his consistent form, structure, and vitality, adapted 
each to his purpose and condition. The positively ugly 
lion, tiger, leopard, bear, horse, cow or dog, is never seen 
except he has been confined or crossed by civilized pro- 
cesses." 

"While, as to civilized humanity, physical ugliness 
and decline is the rule ; — the national god-type has 
yielded to the conventional human one." 

Zimmerman has set forth the pleasures of this voca- 
tion in the following language : 

" Peace of mind upon the earth is the supreme good. 
Simplicity of heart will procure this invaluable blessing 



44 PELICAN PAPERS. 

to the wise mortal, who, renouncing the noisy pleasures 
of the world, sets bounds to his desires and inclinations, 
cheerfully submits himself to the decrees of heaven, and, 
viewing those around him with the eye of charitable in- 
dulgence, feels no pleasures more delightful than those 
which the soft murmur of a stream falling in cascades 
from the summit of rocks, the refreshing breezes of the 
young zephyrs and the sweet accents of the woodland 
chaunters are capable of offering." 

I do not pretend to answer satisfactorily, even to 
myself, the social problems connected with vagabond- 
ism. 

I aver, however, my proclivities for tramping — and 
I join hands with the man who throws reasoning on the 
subject to the dogs, and who takes up his stick and 
leaves behind, as well as he can care, ambition, hope and 
turmoil ; who is tired of civilization's tread-mill, and the 
artificial surroundings of conventional humanity ; who 
looks up to the blue sky, breathes the pure atmosphere, 
gazes on the varying beauties of nature, enjoys the 
present, lives where he can, and on what he can, gives 
physical labor for his small modicum of food and rai- 
ment, under the scriptural doom, calls no man master 
and no man slave, who, in fact — tramps. 

There is another kind of tramp — The mental tramp. 

Mental tramping consists in such a condition of the 
mind as avoids effort, and denudes itself of ambition; 
which receives impressions but cares not to impart them ; 
which makes no strivings and indulges in no anticipa- 
tions ; which avails itself of passing gratifications but 
does not turn aside to seek them ; which pursues such 



TRAMPING. 45 

a routine of mental action as may happen to suggest or 
present itself ; and the whole of which condition pro- 
ceeds from a dreamy contentment which is cultivated 
as a system. This condition is of course one of selfish- 
ness. 

Some would call this kind of tramp '" a hog of Epi- 
curus' breed." He certainly is of that philosophy. — 
Unlike the Cynic, he neither criticises nor rails ; unlike 
the Stoic, he does not bear his breast to the storm, but 
stands aside and avoids it. 

This kind of tramp, while he does no good, does no 
harm. He envies not the success of others, and has 
neither hostility nor the spirit of opposition. He asks 
to be let alone and he lets others alone. He is, withal, 
a moral philosopher. He says to the seeker after hap- 
piness, " The more you love the more you suffer — what 
you most prize you will most regret ;" to the worker, 
"You are wearing yourself and others will enjoy the 
fruit ; " to the ambitious, " cui bono ? " to tiie philan- 
thropist, " If you better human condition you make 
it more sensitive to change and loss ; " to the seeker of 
wealth, " You can buy nothing but shadows ; " to the 
proud man, "Both angels and devils are laughing at 
you ; " to the devotee, " Yon worship you know not 
whom; " to mankind generally, "Ye are a fleeting 
show ; " " then fold your arms and pass along the flood 
of time with the rest." 

I knew a tramp of this kind : he was a man of small 
means, but sufficient for ordinary wants ; he lived alone 
and seldom travelled ; he had experimented somewhat 
in the world, and met with not more than the usual 



46 PELICAN PAPERS. 

amount of disappointments. He was not deficient in 
human sympathy, and was neither what is called hard- 
ened nor blase ; but he prevented the working of his 
sensibilities and subdued his emotions as much as pos- 
sible for a machine endowed with nerves. His theory 
of life was " laissez alter." Observation and neutrality 
was his motto. 

I once held converse with this tramp, somewhat in 
this wise : 

Pelican. — "Well, how do you now pass your time?" 

Trampus. — " Enjoying repose, and seeing the world's 
panorama move ; personal neutrality and insignificance, 
and mental equilibrium and indifference." 

PELICAN. — " Have you not become tired of yourself 
yet?" 

TRAMPUS. — " I am not a recluse ; I am yet of the 
earth ; I have still eyes, ears, and a brain, and have not 
ceased from observation and reflection." 

PELICAN. — " What are your objective points of life ; 
nothing but observation ?" 

The Tramp here expanded himself as follows : 

TRAMPUS. — " Well, sir, in looking at humanity in its 
various social phases and conditions, I find there is 
always with every one, no matter what his condition, 
something wanting, either as a necessity, or a caprice, 



TRAMPING. 47 

Happiness, socially speaking, becomes more and more 
a relative term as civilization with its artificial require- 
ments progresses. A condition that mars one man's 
life would make another's pleasureable ; wants and grat- 
ifications which before were unsought or unknown, 
become in time, necessities, and a deprivation of them 
brings discomfort. The happiness of the cottager and 
the drudge is a condition that to another would not seem 
worth living for'; while the ambitious dreams and artificial 
requirements of the cultured and rich, are to the hewers of 
wood and drawers of water incomprehensible as well as 
undesired. It is to be observed, moreover, that prob- 
ably not one of these people, high or low, is permanent- 
ly contented. They are all grumbling ; all want an in- 
crease or a change ; the poor man murmurs at his lot 
and slaves for his necessaries ; the rich man sweats and 
slaves for more — always for more. If one man is- as 
happy as another, in practical effect — why strive for 
promotions, conditions or results that would make 
increased demands and not increase the personal 
bonum ? Besides that, the absurdly fleeting nature of 
mundane things makes them to my mind particularly 
contemptible. Even the social affections, the commun- 
ion of friendship and domestic life receive such awful 
shocks and blows and losses that it is as well not to 
possess, as a joy, what may give over-balancing pain. 
It is best to conduct life upon the conviction of man's 
utter helplessness under the irresistible forces of nature 
and the chain of circumstances. I also remark that, the 
more possessions one has the greater the loss rather 
the want of which makes either misery or discontent. 



48 PELICAN PAPERS. 

than the gain of independence. It is absurd to be the 
slave of inanimate things, they drag down body and 
soul, and often, probably, kill both. According to the 
theory of those of the Stoic school, it is with the mind 
just as with the body ; in a healthy state it is slightly 
clad, but in sickness, it is wrapped in cumbrous clothing; 
■and it is a sure sign of infirmity to have many wants. 
' It is with life,' says one of them, ' as with swimming ; 
that man is the most expert who is the most disengaged 
from all encumbrances ; just the same way amid the 
stormy tempests of human life, that which is light tends 
to our buoyancy, that which is heavy to sink us.' ' 

Pelican. — " One would think you would have some 
interest in striving, as others do ; the ants and bees are 
all working around you ; industry is a foe to vice, and 
gives tone, vigor and vitality to the individual as well 
as to a community." 

TRAMPUS. — " I have enough for the ordinary require- 
ments of existence ; Bacon says, ' Riches are the bag- 
gage of virtue ; it cannot be spared or left behind, but 
it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it some- 
times loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches 
there is no great use except in the distribution.' The 
philosopher Apuleius remarks that Poverty is the hand- 
maid of philosophy ; ' frugal, temperate, content with 
little, safe in her ways, simple in her requirements, in 
her counsels a promoter of what is right ; no one has 
she ever puffed up with pride, no one has she corrupted 
by the enjoyment of power, no one has she maddened 
with tyrannical ambition ; for no pampering of the 



TRAMPING. 49 

appetite or of the passions does she sigh, nor can she 
indulge it ; poverty has nurtured from his very cradle 
every individual in whom we find anything to admire 
and commend. Poverty I say, she, who, in former ages 
was the foundress of all cities, the inventor of all arts, 
she is guiltless of all offence ; she is lavish of all glory, and 
has been honored with every praise among all nations.' " 

" Crates of Thebes, the follower of Diogenes, had 
learned from experience that no security was be- 
queathed him with his wealth that he should enjoy it 
all his life : that all things are unstable and insecure, 
that all the riches under the sky avail nothing towards 
a happy life. When he had learned these and similar 
truths, partly from Diogenes, and partly from his own 
reflection, he, at last, went out into the forum, and 
threw down his wealth like a load of dung, more fa- 
tiguing than useful. When a great crowd had assem- 
bled he cried out, ' Crates manumits Crates.' Thence- 
forward, we are told, he lived happily, all his days, not 
only without servants, but also bare and disencumbered 
of everything." 

" Mohamed thus preaches, in the book of Alkoran, 
termed the ' Iron,' ' Know that this present life is only 
a toy, and vain amusement and worldly pomp, and the 
affection of glory among you, and the multiplying of 
riches and children are as the plants nourished by the 
rain, the springing up whereof delighteth the husband- 
man ; afterwards, they wither, so that thou seest the same 
turn yellow, and at length they become dry stubble.' " 

" Micromegas, in his discourse with the inhabitants 
of Saturn, remarks, ' I have travelled some, I have seen 



50 PELICAN PAPERS. 

beings far inferior to me, and others much superior; 
but I have never seen any who have not more desires 
than real wants and more wants than satisfaction.' '■: 

Pelican. — " Have you no intellectual pursuits or 
pleasures ?" 

Trampus. — " I read of other people's dreams and 
speculations, and mark how the savants contradict and 
abuse each other, and how each new theory of cosmol- 
ogy, morals and science asserts itself, and is supplanted 
by another, in its turn to be supplanted. The world's 
varying ideas form an endless phantasmagoria. The 
ideas of these dreamers and visionaries, however, no 
more form my plans, thoughts, or actions than do the 
phantasms of sleep. These fellows are now all looking 
down into the dim recesses of nature, among protoplasms 
and germ scells. In fact, man no longer looks erect ; he 
goes shuffling through the world with spectacles on nose, 
a restless ' quid nunc,' neglecting his individuality, bound 
by routine and yet chafing under it, and searching after 
the unfathomable ; each prowler delighting in subvert- 
ing the ideas of a predecessor — each orthodoxy suc- 
cumbing in time to a heterodoxy, and so they go on 
swelling, glittering, clashing, exploding, and passing 
away like bubbles on a stream. I believe in the ' onme 
ignotum ' theory, and that action with a purpose, in 
view of human experiences, is ridiculous." 

The tramp here began to sing in a queer nasal tone, 

' Nous tromper dans nos entreprises, 
C'est a quoi nous sommes sujets ; 
Le matin je fais des projets, 
Et le long du jour des sottises.' ,! 



TRAMPING. 5 1 

" After a certain experience of life," he continued, 
" the past is a subject of regret or pain. The future is 
a cheat, the present is but a punctum temporis ; ergo; 
fold your arms and consider yourself a mere conglom- 
erate of atoms the sport of nature or destiny." 

PELICAN. — " Do you not entertain any sense of re- 
sponsibility for your actions or non actions?" 

TrAMPUS. — " I am told by the most highly cultivated 
and best paid spiritual pastors and masters, that what 
good works I do of my own volition gain me nothing. 
What good I may do is considered a fruit, not an act 
of volition yielding reward. It is stated that I must 
merely have faith. That is, that I must stop reasoning 
and believe what they tell me. I will take what is told 
me by the two leading evangelical sects. I find by the 
Westminster catechism, that whatever comes to pass 
has been foreordained and fixed, including election to 
life eternal. I also find by the 17th article of the Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church, that the same doctrine is held 
by that church. Entertaining the above, as I am told to 
do, as an article of faith, I find that I am blessed or 
damned in spite of myself from all eternity. It is 
natural under the circumstances that I should fold my 
arms, and say ' Cut bono.'' " 

PELICAN — " I shall have to conclude, that you are a 
Nihilist, a Pessimist, and a Fatalist." 

TRAMPUS. — " Epithets are a weak style of argu- 
ment." 

I became tired of this tramp, and I suppose he was 
of me, for I left him yawning. 



PUFF-BALLS. 



There is a human genus of this character, the species 
of which are numerous and multiform. 

The characteristic base is self-consequence ; this may 
arise variously, as from example, from ignorance, from 
training, from association. Various conditions may de- 
velop different species, as do various soils the typical 
vegetable fungi. 

Naturalists remark upon the rapidity with which the 
Puff-ball increases in size. A Giant Ball {Lycoperdon 
gigantenni) that was less than an inch in diameter in the 
evening, has been known to enlarge to the diameter of 
a foot by morning. 

Characteristics of this fungus are also that it springs 
up unexpectedly in the dark, without apparent cause or 
origin ; it grows best in the midst of corruption, and 
draws its nourishment from putrefaction ; its develop- 
ment is rapid and its life brief; it is too capricious in its 
growth to be cultivated ; and, finally, rots on a dung- 
hill or perishes in its morass. 

The meanest kind of human fungus of this type is 
the Social Puff-ball. This represents an individual who 
is valueless in him or herself, and has, and, in fact, claims 
no high characteristic ; but arrogates and asserts per- 
sonal superiority, consequence and dignity, from being 
of a so-called superior social grade. Higher is the self- 



PUFF-BALLS. 53 

consequence and greater the pride when this is acquired 
by personal struggle, no matter through what abase- 
ment. 

The glory attained is a reflected or borrowed light, 
the status a nullity, — that is, it has no real qualities or 
conditions ; per se : the stratum the Puff-ball stands on, 
and in which he grows and flourishes, may be flimsy 
and rotten, and his fellow Puff-balls no better than him- 
self — but there he is, and there they are, and they puff 
and swell together. They make there own atmosphere 
and their mutual pretention exalts them into apparent 
size and consequence. Individually, his associates may 
be contemptible even to the Puff-ball, if he has obser- 
vation and discrimination, but collectively they are a 
recognized power ; and he and they have a curious do- 
minion, the causes of whose influence are not apparent, 
the extent of which is illogical and absurd, and whose 
consequences are detrimental to human elevation and 
progress. 

The Puff-balls have a code of union and conduct. 
This code is strict and yet unwritten and undefined ; it 
is merciless and unfeeling ; it disregards the humanities ; 
it controls common sense ; it conceals truth ; it ridicules 
feeling; it jeers at sensibility; it distorts nature; it 
breeds envy and hatred ; it wounds, it paralyzes, it 
destroys. 

Curiously enough, it gives no tangible reward nor 
affords any positive pleasure to its votaries — they are 
its slaves, and although gagged and bound by it, they 
willingly continue the thralldom, sing its praises, and 
lick the lash. 



54 PELICAN PAPERS. 

The rising Puff-ball will endure an indefinite amount 
of slight, and even abuse from the risen Puff-balls, as he 
clambers toward the shining goal. He gradually, as he 
climbs, loses all sensibility and self-respect, and when 
risen, his consolation for indignities received is that he 
can throw them back upon those striving below, or who 
are still wriggling in mid-air. 

The kick and counter-kick are daily occurrences of 
his social life. It is of no consequence if the kick he 
receives is paid back upon an innocent recipient. Jus- 
tice is not a characteristic of Puff-ball life. 

Another curious characteristic is, that the Social Puff- 
balls, while openly fawning and sycophantic to each 
other, are secretly mutually vituperative. There is no 
mutual regard but rather a mutual dislike, fed by envy, 
and an apprehension that the one may advance the 
other in the Puff-ball sphere. There is no sympathy 
of feeling between them, but only a sympathy of glitter 
and show. They will hear of a misfortune to another 
almost with satisfaction, and make it a subject of deri- 
sive comment. 

Another characteristic is that there is no moral tone 
or standard of conduct in Puff-ballia, and moral obliquity 
does not operate to disqualify in its social life. 

So long as suspicious characters or transgressors are 
generally recognised by the Puff-ball society that is 
enough : that recognition washes away or covers delin- 
quincies. 

There is one crime, however, that seems always to 
degrade in this peculiar social sphere : that is poverty. 
Let a Puff-ball but lose the means of flourishing 



PUFF-BALLS. 55 

and rolling about flagrantly with the rest, and he drops 
out of sight ; his consequence and position are gone : 
his quasi friends make him a subject of gossip and 
jeer, they give him no sympathy, and extend no assist- 
ance ; they kick him away and send him rolling else- 
where. 

It is too late for him to make a new set of acquaint- 
ances. They would be uncongenial. 

There is nothing left for the poor Puff-ball, but to 
puff out his powder and collapse in the dark. 

I will, by way of illustration, give a description of a 
nascent Puff-ball temporarily located at a gay capital 
during the winter. As it is a portrait that resembles 
many, I will insert it as illustrating my text. It is from 
the correspondence of a keen observer, writing from 
the locality, 

" It is amusing to see how many ' Mrs. Proudies ' 
there are in Washington. And it is — not — amusing to 
see how many nice little wives, and good, plain mothers 
are spoiled by a taste of gayety in our republican capi- 
tal. One member's wife, when she came here first, a 
few months ago, was really home-sick for her little vil- 
lage. But after the cards came in to her, and she began 
to fully realize that she was the wife of a member of 
Congress, what airs the country mite took on herself. 
Ladies whose claim to distinction rested upon their in- 
nate refinement and intelligence, and not upon the acci- 
dental position of their husbands, were passed unnoticed 
save by the faintest smilingless inclination ; and the 
grade or rank of a lady's husband could have been told 
by a looker-on, by the warmth or coolness with which 



56 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the wife of the new member welcomed them. The 
change in the toilet of the lady was marked. Her eye 
eagerly ran" over the dresses of her acquaintances. From 
a modest lady in a plain black silk and smooth brown 
locks she burst into the less distingut style of light 
satin and bare shoulders, and pyramid-shaped head with 
the surrounding thatch of frizzes which hides the broad, 
beautiful brow and makes every woman look like an 
idiot. The lady now trips to her hired cab every day, 
and gives her orders to the coachman with an icy, fault- 
finding tone, which she, poor soul, does not know indi- 
cates her newness to the luxury of a hired team and 
livery. Her days are a round of ceaseless, meaningless 
toadyism ; her nights wild revels, where neither sense 
nor comfort ever show their plain, old-fashioned faces. 
This woman, before her husband's election, would have 
sat up with her neighbor's sick child. She would have 
made its tiny grave clothes and put flowers in its dead 
hands, the while her eyes were misty with sympathy. 
But now she is spoiled for everything. She will fly her 
round, fritter away her day, drop out of life, and not a 
ripple on the tide of fashionable society will show where 
she has gone down." 



SOCIETY IN MONGRELIA. 

Society in Mongrelia has many varieties ; it would 
be invidious to call them grades when each branch 
claims equal eminence. The ethnological conditions of 
all the varieties are nearly similar, and the result in 
each case essentially mongrel. The same soil sown 



PUFF-BALLS. 57 

with various seed has produced a composite race with- 
out any national characteristics, homogeneous princi- 
ples or race sympathies. 

The principal formative races have been the Dutch, 
English and Irish ; there has been also, from time to 
time, a slight French and Sclavonic infusion. The 
principal occupation of the denizens of Mongrelia has 
been the accumulation of money. Mammon is wor- 
shipped not so much for the solid substantial gifts he 
may confer, as for the opportunity and power given by 
him to enable the Mongrelians to shine and glitter. 

Success in literature, art, science, invention or states- 
manship has been little aimed at or appreciated in 
Mongrelian society ; in fact, success in those matters 
is rather subject of wonder and ridicule than of admira- 
tion or effort. 

The administration of political affairs, is not, as in 
other commonwealths, a matter entrusted to persons of 
ability or character, but so anxious is the Mongrelian 
to accumulate money for the purpose of shining and 
puffing that the administration of public affairs is left to 
the ignorant, the degraded and the unscrupulous, who 
make of politics the means of personal gain, and who, 
through the abuse of public laws, systematically rob the 
well-to-do Mongrelians, who discard all matters of pub- 
lic government as low and beneath their attention, and 
as interfering with their entertainments and amuse- 
ments. 

Even in the polite circles of Mongrelia, however, vari- 
ous classes of knavery are represented and tolerated. 
I do not mean to say that knavery is a characteristic of 



58 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the society of Mongrelia, but only that it has a consid- 
erable representation there, and that deviation from 
honor, rectitude and virtuous life does not meet with 
the reprobation and disgrace that is supposed to attend 
it. 

The junior male figurants in high society in Mon- 
grelia are distinguished by a pretention, the basis of 
which is feeble. It is an assertion of self-importance 
and consequence that looks upon those not of their 
association as socially and individually insignificant. 

These social heroes are neither gifted, learned nor 
even ordinarily educated ; they have neither genius, 
culture, or taste, except mayhap in the matter of ap- 
parel, cookery, wine, crockery, or some petty sport or 
game. 

Neither have they the dignity or elevation of charac- 
ter and conduct which traditional descent, noble occu- 
pation, high ambition or manly effort may confer. 

They are mostly petty toilers in some sphere of life 
that calls for no mental or moral effort, or intellectual 
training, and which adds nothing to human sustenance, 
happiness or progress. 

They are usually interchangers, negotiators, money 
lenders, agents or clerical employees, seldom pro- 
ducers, or great commercial dealers, never instruc- 
tors, philanthropists or constructors, and are rarely 
engaged in the learned professions. 

An absorbing object of the above Mongrelian youth 
is either to receive money without labor or to become 
accomplished in that species of legerdemain which will 
most readily transfer cash from other people's pockets 



PUFF-BALLS. 59 

into their own. They are not always over scrupulous 
as to the means, and daily becomes less so. 

This occupation is one that requires a sharpness that 
is soon acquired and has no relation to intellect. The 
above class, in the main, compose the male jeunesse doree 
of Mongrelia, and this element has an assumption of su- 
periority, that makes people who have an appreciation 
of true merit in humanity, smile in derision. 

When the Mongrelian young man of the above caste 
travels in European lands, his principal aim is to shut 
off his nationality, and appear to be something else than 
what he is. You cannot shock him more greatly, than, 
if meeting him in Europe, to tell him that you would 
know him for a Mongrelian, and hail him as a country- 
man. " Why," he would exclaim, aghast, " every one 
takes me for an Englishman or a Frenchman," or what- 
ever he may choose to be. He considers a recognition 
of his nationality as an insult. Another peculiarity is 
that he dislikes to be considered anything but a 
man of means and fortune — a rentier, as the foreign 
term is. 

Therefore, when the Puff-ball young Mongrelian 
is on his foreign travels, whether his occupation at 
home be that of broker, financier, auctioneer, house- 
agent, steamboat runner, quack medicine man, liquor 
dealer, clerk, tea-taster, druggist, coal dealer, trader, or 
lawyer, he will inscribe himself on hotel book or pass- 
port as a rentier, and would be very indignant if you 
exposed him by informing any foreign person of his real 
occupation. 

In fact, when the puff-ball young Mongrelian travels 



60 PELICAN PAPERS. 

in Europe he is both ashamed of his nationality and his 
occupation. 

The Mongrelian young woman of the so-called upper 
class is not educated to a degree that is burdensome. 

The smattering of mental acquisition that is supposed 
sufficiently to develop her intellect is considered termi- 
nated at about the age of seventeen. 

There is great similarity among the Mongrelian young 
women. They seem all run in the same type or mould. 
Anything like originality or deviation from the type 
would be considered unconventional, unfashionable, and 
therefore, absurd. The type has a slight knowledge of 
rudimentary branches by dint of forced routine culture 
sufficient to give understanding of the main features of 
a novel or the plot of a play. 

Her knowledge of'art is confined to what is requisite 
for her adornment. The type has no taste for the sub- 
lime or beautiful in nature. She looks at a star simply 
with an idea that it is a little bright thing. She never 
looks at a sunset sky but with respect to the colors 
therein that might be adapted to a dress. 

What are called accomplishments may have been 
aimed at, but they have soon been relinquished as dis- 
tasteful or as troublesome. The conversation of these 
types is trivial and snappy — the topics are small local 
occurrences or personal gossip— their daily objects of 
interest are routines of mutual visiting, amusements of 
a light character and trivial shows to beguile time, 
which, otherwise would drag wearily. All thought be- 
yond that which is ephemeral, is beyond their scope, 



PUFF-BALLS. 6l 

and, in fact, their desire, and they float along in an at- 
mosphere narrow and vapid. 

As a true history of the routine daily life of a 
specimen of the above female type, I will quote 
a letter written by one of them to a friend. It is 
genuine : 

" We breakfast about 10 ; breakfast occupies the best 
part of an hour, during which we read our letters, and 
pick up the latest news in the papers. After that we 
have to go and answer our letters, and my mother ex- 
pects me to write her notes of invitation, or to reply to 
such. Then I go into the conservatory and feed the 
canaries and parrots, and cut off the dead leaves and 
flowers from the plants. Then it is time to dress for 
lunch, and at two o'clock we lunch. At three, my 
mother likes me to go with her when she makes 
her calls, and then we come home to a five o'clock 
tea, when some friends drop in. After that, we get 
ready to take our drive in the Park, and then 
we go home to dinner, and after dinner we go to the 
theatre or the opera, or a ball, and then, when we get 
home, I am so dreadfully tired that I don't know what 
to do." 

Such a life, of course, tends strongly to develop the 
intellect, enlarge the sympathies, and form such a char- 
acter as the Roman satirist describes : 

" Then see what trains of affectation come 
To blast the looked-for comforts of thy home, 
The last Greek phrase the last Cecropian curl 
Or Attic robe must grace the wayward girl." 



62 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" Schooled by the ant, some men, at least, forbear, 
And of the present for the future spare ; 
But prodigal in ruin, woman still 
Expects some miracle the void to fill." 

The grand object in life the female inhabitant of 
what is termed the upper, wealthy classes of Mongrelia, 
is, either to marry a foreign title or to secure one for a 
daughter. This matter differs from the Circassian busi- 
ness in that the Circassian parent receives money from 
the sale of the daughter, whereas the Mongrelian pays 
money to secure the son-in-law. 

So ardent is the desire and belief in this matter that 
it becomes almost in time, a creed, and may be thus re- 
solved : 

u I believe in the advantages of a foreign son-in-law, 
especially in a titled one or the son of a title. I believe 
that thereby we will be enabled to exalt our horns sev- 
eral pegs, and look down upon Mrs. A., B. or C. who 
now consider themselves entitled to do the same to us. 

" I believe in transferring the family property to a 
fortune-hunter." 

" I believe in the transmigration of people, the exile 
of children, the cutting up of household gods, the aban- 
donment of country, the annihilation of patriotism, the 
destruction of friendship, and the loss of self-respect, — 
and I believe in the change of one's religion, and in 
a European life to come, if thereby one can make a 
greater dash and figure in the foreign and domestic 
world. Amen !" 

This curious ambition to secure a foreign alliance is 



PUFF-BALLS. 63 

indicated even in the precincts of Mongrelia by great 
rival efforts. 

The object of pursuit is caught there, if possible, 
when in transitu, surfeited with attentions, tempted by 
the bait of a settlement, and secured if possible, before 
he may be impeded by a family veto. 

Another curious fact I have noticed among the Mon- 
golians. If a Mongrelian family should, in the course 
of their social struggles, secure a temporary floating 
status, in the polished circles of some foreign capital, 
there is great and remarkable exaltation, and a herald- 
ing of the fact through every known process. News- 
papers are instructed ; professed gossips are informed, 
and communications sent with full details in every 
quarter where they may possibly propagate the news. 
The recipients of such social favors seem to think that 
it is a great, unexpected and wonderful thing that they 
should be admitted into superior and polished circles at 
all ; they look with compassion upon those who, from 
disinclination to such struggles, or otherwise are not 
similarly favored, and are ready to lick the hands and 
humble themselves before the people of Ck quality " who 
may have noticed them. 

Another thing to be remarked about the fashionable 
Mongrelians is, that they have no friendships, or, at 
least, none that they would not sacrifice at the dictate 
of expediency or fashion. Let the latter deity pro- 
nounce its decree against some one who may have de- 
cided to despise or break her fetters, let triflers point 
the shaft of ridicule, let humbler means require cessa- 
tion of superfluous expenditure, let chastened feeling 



64 PELICAN PAPERS. 

give taste for more rational and conscientious life, such 
individuals become nonentities, and are socially excom- 
municated. The above result appears natural when it 
is considered how trivial is the basis of friendship in 
Mongrelia ; not sympathy of mind, feeling or character, 
but harmony in mutual self-assertion, companionship 
which has some selfish or trivial object, or shallow in- 
tercourse which has no object at all. 



A MONGRELIAN IDYL. 



I will narrate an Idyl of the high social circles of 
Mongrelia. 

It is about Smeethe de Weatherwax and Maude Fin- 
negan van Shamspangle. It will be observed the names 
are rather mongrel. They are compounded of English, 
French, Dutch and Irish. This is accounted for in this 
way: There was a cobbler named Smith, origin un- 
known, although he had, in fact, as many ancestors as 
the Duke of Somerset. Smith cobbled steadily for 
twenty years until, as he pounded his last, he pounded 
an idea out of it connected with shoe-pegs. He 
patented the idea, which brought him some money, 
with which he started a shoe shop. From retail he ex- 
panded to the wholesale line, took large State prison 
contracts and cheated the State, and took advantage of 
a national war to handsomely cheat the Government. 
He became, in time, a Savings bank's president, and 
thereafter, by judicious and timely borrowing from the 
institution (which failed), he retired, a triple millionaire. 






PUFF-BALLS. 65 

Now, when Smith was a cobbler, the relative laxity or 
stiffness of his hogs' bristles enabled him to presage the 
weather. Hence his ale-house chums dubbed him 
Weatherwax Smith. When he was rising in the world, 
in order to distinguish himself from a rival Smith, he 
reversed his name 'into that of Smith Weatherwax. 
When he became Smith Weatherwax, Esq., as Presi- 
dent of the " Mongrelia Flare and Flash Savings insti- 
tution," his wife (an ex-milliner) insisted on the French 
change ; consequently the cards issued for an entertain- 
ment given at the new Weatherwax mansion, were 
issued in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Smith de Weather- 
wax. When their eldest son, Smith, subsequently came 
from abroad, after a year's sojourn in the capitals of 
Europe, whence he returned with an eye-glass perma- 
nently fixed in one eye, a broken constitution, an ex- 
tensive wardrobe, a taste for cheating at cards, a few 
French words and phrases, an entire moral obliquity 
and an overbearing sense of the importance, intelligence 
excellence and consequence of his own body and soul, 
then, I remark, this individual thinking " Smith " was a 
common " lead," as he expressed it, causes that sonorous 
cognomen to undergo a Norman French change, into 
" Smeethe," and thenceforward, he figured as Smeethe 
de Weatherwax, Jr., Esq., and that name was engraved 
on a seal, with coat of arms got up for him by the cele. 
brated Strong i' th' arm, of Waterloo place, London. 

Now it came to pass that Smeethe, the younger, was 
beginning to get bored with the world generally. He 
had witnessed about thirty summers. The " old man," 
as he reverently termed Smeethe, Sr., " kept," as he re- 



66 PELICAN PAPERS. 

marked, " the screws too tight for him "; so Smeethe, 
Jr., thought he would fix his intellect upon accomplish- 
ing the great summum bonum of Mongrelian effort and 
life, i. e., marrying money. 

With that view he rolled his protuberant eyes upon 
Maude Finnegan van Shamspangle. She was the 
daughter of Shamspangle (the " Van " was subsequently 
added) the baker, who owned an out-of-town pasture, 
which, under the flush times of a currency plethora, de- 
veloped into city lots and made Shamspangle rich. As 
he was gliding up the social scale his eye gazed upon 
the buxom charms, encased in flaunting finery, of 
Bridget Finnegan, daughter of Alderman Finnegan, the 
Irish politician and contractor. Through Finnegan's 
influence with his friends and relatives in the Board of 
Aldermen he had caused the grade of Mushroom ave- 
nue to be changed five times ; so that he and his friends 
and coadjutors might get the successive jobs. The 
Mushroomers squealed and roared as they had to open 
their money bags for the taxes and assessments, but 
were too lazy to do anything against the flagrant in- 
justice. They were ignorant too, of State and City 
affairs. Politics, they said, was a low business, so they 
preferred to rob each other in Bullion street, and then, 
be cheated by political jobbers. 

The result of the above process, however, was that 
Finnegan prospered, and Miss Finnegan became Mrs. 
Van Shamspangle. A further result was the creation 
of the being who, after her return from a finishing board- 
ing school, became a shining social light, under the poly- 
glot designation of Maude Finnegan van Shamspangle. 






PUFF-BALLS. 6? 

Maude Finnegan van Shamspangle had been for 
some years in what is called the first society of Mon- 
grelia, at the time that de Weatherwax fixed his aforesaid 
eye upon her with serious intents. She was what was 
called a good parti, and there were many aspirants for 
her hand ; and pourqicoi pas ? 

She had been educated in a dozen first-class schools ; 
she was supposed to be an heiress, her costumes came 
from Paris, and her family had a country house at Nink- 
um-sport, and a pew at St. Modus church. Their posi- 
tion, therefore, was of the first class. Besides that, 
Shamspangle pere was a prominent citizen, he was a 
vestryman at St. Modus', president of a National bank, 
director of the '"Bubble and Squeak Petroleum Co.," 
and the entertaining special partner of the great finan- 
cial firm of Ramshackle, Iscariot & Co. I will en- 
deavor to describe Maude. In describing her, I shall 
have to be somewhat realistic, although I am writing an 
idyl. 

Maude was about 26 years of age. She was smallish 
in height, her bones were pipey, and her adipose matter 
was meagre ; so that although, when stuffed, bedraped 
and beribboned she might have misled the idealizing 
spectator by an apparent rotundity, she was, in fact, little 
more than a skeleton. Her voice was nasal and squeaky, 
and generally pitched at an unnecessarily high tone, 
her complexion was sallow and dull, her hair and teeth 
decidedly in their decadence ; and yet surely no one 
could say that, when arrayed in an imported costume, 
with somebody else's tresses piled on her head and plas- 



68 PELICAN PAPERS. 

tered about her forehead, that Maude van Shamspangle 
was not an exceedingly stylish girl. She evidently 
thought so, as she swept and tottered along the Avenue, 
on her high-heeled boots, leaning on the arm of de 
Weatherwax; her face in a continuous simper, under 
the vocal blandishments of that gentleman. 

Maude was no chicken in love making. Once she 
had been engaged to three men, at the same time, 
although this, by the way, was considered no unusual 
thing among the females at Mongrelia. It gave Maude 
additional prestige, as being "smart." She subsequently 
nearly caught an English lord on his travels ; when his 
friends interfered and expressed him home. She had 
also been nearly caught herself, by an Italian barber in 
the guise of a count, when her friends interfered and 
bought off the barber. Her maiden affections were, 
however, for the present disengaged ; and, with the 
approbation of her family (who were now a little 
anxious about her, as there were two younger sisters 
coming on), she had promised Smeethe de Weatherwax, 
as she dangled with his gorgeous watch chain, to be his 
lawful wife. Smeethe had sealed the contract with the 
ordinary salute and caught her enthusiastically in his 
arms ; and yet, — while leaving the house, he might 
have been heard somewhat moodily soliloquizing, as he 
expectorated a somewhat suspiciously bismuth taste 
from his mouth : " Who would have thought she was such 

a light weight ? " I am sorry to be so realistic, 

but I must be truthful. 

The bells of St. Modus rang merrily, and there was a 
great wedding. The newspaper correspondents had been 



PUFF-BALLS. 69 

duly informed, and the manufactured pedigrees of the 
families of the bride and groom duly furnished, together 
with a list of presents and guests, so that the envying 
public might be instructed, through the morning journals 
of the great event in high life, that had occurred, The 
usual gay routine was gone through by the married 
pair. When the gaiety was over they yawned in 
mutual vacuity. Finally a puny baby appeared, to 
break the silly routine. The baby lived its little span 
and died daily, although arrayed sumptuously and 
pampered luxuriously. Its little brain could not stand 
the wear and tear of being made a show-piece until far 
into the night ; and the little stomach could not stand 
the continuous nourishment of French dishes and 
sweetmeats. 

Then Maude took to theatres, to shake off sorrow, 
and Smeethe to gambling and drinking at the clubs. 

Maude waxed thinner and sallower under diseases 
incident to ignorance of health laws, and the perversion 
and distortion of nature. The time that should have 
been given to air and exercise, was expended in the 
flimsy decoration of her empty head and weazened face. 
Smeethe's nose grew redder and redder, and later and 
later did his night key fumble at the door. She became 
a slattern and a devotee to French novels ; he, rapidly 
a drunkard. The purse, too. began to run low. 
Weatherwax, senior, was in straits, under the great 
financial panic which made his real estate a drug in the 
market, and sent him finally, a pauper lunatic, to an 
insane asylum. 

The great banking house of Ramshackle, Iscariot & 



70 PELICAN PAPERS. 

Co., of which Van Shamspangle was a special partner, 
also began to be talked about and to totter. It had 
long flourished on no capital but the pretentions of its 
partners, and the ingenious device of paying its deposi- 
tors a high rate of interest while it quietly ate up their 
principal. 

Finally it utterly collapsed and the assignee in 
bankruptcy showed only as assets some shares in the 
"Phantasmagoria Silver Mining Co." 

Soon the house and household implements were 
sold under the banner of the sheriff's auctioneer, 
on judgments in favor of the butcher, and baker, 
and modiste ; and the stately mansion, the re- 
naissance furniture, the faience pottery, the Japan- 
ese monstrosities, the pet dog, the bric-a-brac, 
the opera box, and the pew at St. Modus vanished into 
thin air ! 

The next scene in the idyl represents a little emaci- 
ated body in in St. Modus, encased in a casket. The 
organist strums his prelude ; the soprano sings her 
solo : the Rev. Ignatius Snowbands plumes his whiskers 
in the vestry room before going through with the burial 
service in his usual velvety tones. 

The audience went forth again into the garish sun- 
light and gossipped over the event A few journeyed 
to the cemetery, and then, — all that was left of Maude 
Finnegan Van Shamspangle withered away in the dark ! 

The last incident of this idyl I give in an extract from 
the " Mongrelia Daily Crucible : " 



PUFF-BALLS. 71 

" Court of Sessions." 

" At the opening of the court, yesterday, the district 
attorney moved for sentence on the young forger, 
Smeethe de Weatherwax, Jr., who was found guilty at 
the last term, of forging the name of the dry goods 
firm of Dowlass, Dadoe & Co. to a check on the Bank 
of the Metropolis." 

" The criminal, on being interrogated if he had any- 
thing to say why judgment should not be pronounced 
against him, muttered a few unintelligible words. He 
was, evidently, under the influence of liquor, and had to 
be supported in a half standing position by two officers 
while the sentence was imposed." 

" After some severe remarks on the enormity of the 
offence, especially as committed by one of the criminal's 
education and position, the Court stated, that there was 
no doubt, in its mind, that the prisoner had been fairly 
convicted, after a full and impartial trial, and that the 
plea of ' morbid emotional insanity' which had been 
urged in defense of the crime was a frivolous one, and 
entirely unsubstantiated by the testimony. The Court 
then imposed a sentence of ten years in the State 
prison, the highest penalty allowed by the law. The 
criminal was then handcuffed and driven in the prison 
van to the Tombs, whence, that afternoon, together 
with the negro burglar Williams, he was taken by deputy 
sheriff Rafferty to the State prison." - 



72 PELICAN PAPERS. 

THE LITERARY PUFF-BALL. 

Another species of the genus Puff-ball is the literary. 

This Puff-ball may have written a book, or may only 
have been a magazine rhymster, imposing his fancies 
on a community that can only tolerate him or her in 
driblets. 

This latter species puffs greatly after having been 
admitted into the pages of some periodical. The fol- 
lowing is an example of the prevalent style : 

" Sweet love and I have strangers been 
These many years, 
So many years ! 
O ! love, come to me once again : 
My lone heart sighs, — 
So sadly sighs ! " 

Take this, also : 

" The twilight beams from out her crystal tower, 
And seems to smile upon the parting day ; 

Some trembling beams still trick her windowed bower, 
But fast they fade before the encroaching gray." 

I have also read a remarkable piece of composition, 
evidently the result of the incandescent thought of a 
poet who was a great admirer of Campbell's battle piece 
of Hohenlinden ; it is called The Battle of Busaco. I 
will give four stanzas as a sample ; they are full of 
genius : 



PUFF-BALLS. 73 

"Beyond Busaco's mountains dun, 
When far had rolled the sultry sun, 
And night her pall of gloom had thrown 
On nature's still convexity : " 

" The orb of day, in crimson dye, 
Began to mount the morning sky ; 
Then what a scene for warrior's eye 
Hung on the bold declivity ! " 

" The serried bayonets glittering stood 
Like icicles on hills of blood ; 
An aerial stream, a silver wood, 
Reeled in the flickering canopy." 

"The pause is o'er — the fatal shock 
A thousand thousand thunders woke ; 
The air grows thick ; the mountains rock, 
Red ruin rides triumphantly." 

How nobly that word " triumphantly" winds up the 
last verse — and what a superior word-stroke that calling 
the earth a " convexity," in the first verse. Hohenlinden 
sinks far into the shade. Poor Campbell will soon be 
forgotten, while this new battle poet will be riding 
about over his " still convexities," and " flickering 
canopies," and " bold declivities " ! 

There are two semi-lunatic English rhymsters named 
Browning. They have been spinning out their brains 
for a quarter of a century, in ragged, jagged, crinkled 
versification and turgid blank verse, characterized by 



74 PELICAN PAPERS. 

morbidity, profanity, considerable vulgarity, and a 
studied, strained, muddy obscurity which, by some, is 
called genius. Their conceit is something wonderful. 
This is particularly noted in the one of the twain 
ycleped Robert, whose dedications of his lyrical dramas 
so called, are absurdly pretentious. One piece of blank 
verse, addressed to a fellow jingler, he heads with these 
words : 

" Dedication." 

" No one loves and honors Barry Cornwall more than 
Robert Browning does ; 

" Who, having nothing better than this play to give 
him, in proof of it, 

" Must say so." 



This rhymster in describing a daybreak gives it to 
us in the elevated metaphorical shape of a boiling tea- 
kettle, in this wise : 

" Day ! 
Faster and more fast, 
O'er night's brim, day boils at last ; 
Boils, pure gold, o'er cloud cup's brim 
Where spurting and opprest it lay." 

Here, you will observe, he muddles his metaphor 
between the kettle and the tea-cup — he is so fond of 
boiling that he makes them both boil. 



PUFF-BALLS. 75 

Describing a king's hair, he says ; 

" And the king's locks curled 

Disporting o'er a forehead full, 
As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn 
Of some sacrificial bull ! " 

The following is a fine specimen of his maniacal jing- 
ling style : 

" As I ride, as I ride, 
When an inner voice has cried, 
The sands slide nor abide 
(As I ride, as I ride) 
O'er each visioned Homicide 
That came vaunting (has he lied ?) 
To reside — where he died, 
As I ride, as I ride." 

" As I ride, as I ride, 
Could I loose what fate has tied, 
E'er I pried, she should hide, 
As I ride as I ride, 
All that 's meant me ; satisfied, 
When the Prophet and the Bride 
Stop veins I'd have subside, 
As I ride, as I ride." 

The rhyming dictionary crops out there rather too 
palpably, Maestro Browning ! 

This is the way he dribbles about " Love." 



J6 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" So the year's done with ! 

{Love me forever /) 
, All March begun with, 
April's endeavor ; 
May wreaths that bound me 

June needs must sever ! 
Now snows fall around me, 
Quenching June's fever, 
(Love me forever !) " 

The rhyming dictionary again ! 

The female Browning thus jabbers : 

" Grief sat upon a rock and sighed, one day, 

(Sighing is all her rest,) 
' Well away, well away, oh, well away ! ' 

As Ocean beat the stone did she her breast, 
' Ah, well away ! Ah, me ! alas, ah, me ! ' 
Such sighing uttered she." 

This is a picture of Venus and Adonis. 

" Ah ! ah, Cytherea ! Adonis is dead, 

Fair Adonis is dead — Echo answers, Adonis ! 
Who weeps not for Cypris, when, bowing her head, 
She stares at the wound where it gapes and astonies.' 

Astonies is a fine lunatic word. Query, would Echo 

say Adonis if the challenging word was " dead ? ' 

Would Venus take to the study of morbid anatomy 
under the circumstances? 



PUFF-BALLS. 77 

Here is a specimen of her grandiose, muddled style : 

" Florence, Bologna, Parma, Modena, 
When you named them a year ago 
So many graves reserved by God, in a 
Day of Judgment, you seemed to know, 
To open and let out the resurrection." 

And yet this sort of stuff is printed, published, and 
rated by the poetry bric-a-bracker as A No. I. 



The following balderdash was written by one Dobell, 
whose verses collected have gone through divers 
editions : 

" While the thistle bears 
Spears, 

And the shamrock is green, 
And the English rose 
Blows, 

A health to the Queen ! 

A health to the Queen ! a health to the Queen ! 
Fill high, boys, drain dry, boys, 
A health to the Queen ! 



" My granny came down — 'pour vous voir, mon barbare' 
She brought in her pocket a map — du Tartare — 
Drawn up, so she vowed, ' par un homme ah ! si bon ' 
With a plan for campaigning old Hal, en haut ton, 



78 PELICAN PAPERS. 

With, ' here you may trick: him, and here you may prick 

him, 
And here — jf you do it en roi — you may lick him, 
But there he is sacred, and yonder — oh, la ! 
He 's as dear a sweet soul as your late grand papa.' 

" Soho, blow trumpeter, 
Trumpeter, trumpeter ! 

Blow the charge, trumpeter, blare, boy, blare ! 
Fall, tyrants, fall — the devil care where ! 
A health to the Queen ! a health to the Queen ! 
Fill high, boys, drain dry, boys, 
A health to the Queen ! " 

Here is some more of his gibberings : 

" Oh, a gallant sans penr 
Is the merry chasseur, 

With his fan-faron-horn and his rifle, ping-pang, 
And his grand haversack 
Of gold on his back, 
His pistol, cri-crack ! 
And his sword, cling-clang ! " 

Here is part of a piece called a psalm or war tune. 
It is addressed to the Lord ! 

" So then return upon the day of battle, 
So we be strong upon the day of battle, 
Be drtink with Thee, upon the day of battle. 
So then shine o'er us in the day of battle, 



PUFF-BALLS. 79 

Shine in the faces of our enemies, 

Hot in the faces of our enemies, 

Hot o'er the battle and the victory. 

Victory, victory ! oh, Lord, victory ! 

Oh, Lord, victory ! Lord, Lord, victory ! " 



These morbid people have generally " lone hearts," 
and " buried hopes," and " shattered dreams," and "sad 
tears." They are fond of the words, " glamour," and 
" sheen," and " phantasmal," and " weird," and " hoary," 
and " glint," and " shimmer." They revel in hyperbole 
and apostrophical exclamations and interjections ; they 
are continually exclaiming, " Oh ! " to some ghoul-like 
abstraction — that is preying upon their moribund 
poetical corpuses — as this : 

" Oh ! heart that buffets upon thyself." 

Or this : 

" O ! life that fleets,— O ! soul too dear, 
O ! time that eats — Oh thoughts that wear! " 

As follows writes a poetaster in Blackwood, apropos 
of a lark's feather which he picked up : 

" And the feather I asked from the boundless heaven 
Were a gift of little worth ; 
For oh ! what a boon by the lark is given 
When he brings all heaven to earth." 

The syllogism may be thus stated : " The lark gives 
an indescribable boon when he goes through the Titanic 



80 PELICAN PAPERS. 

feat of bringing heaven down to earth ; now, I asked 
heaven to send me a feather; so it follows that the 
feather heaven may send is not worth much." 

The logic here, and the hyperbole are equally 
admirable. 

But Scriblerus Poeticus is seldom logical ; he leaves 
that to the dullards of the Pope school ; his Pegasus 
abhors the ctirricichtm of sense and reason, and soars 
and prances ad libitum ; and his rider cries out : t( oh ! " 
when some particularly prominent hyperbolic curvet is 
accomplished. 

Another dabster in a London weekly of pretention 
winds up his address to the " Ocean," with the fine 
medicinal figure noticeable in the last line : 

" For the prophet's fire and motion, 
Icy mask and sneer sardonic, 
Be it so — Majestic Ocean ! 

Thou art melancholy's tonic ! " 

Shade of Byron ! arise and bear witness against this 
pharmaceutical poet. He was in distress, however, 
for a rhyme to "sardonic," and if he did not take the 
" tonic " what was he to do ? 

The " moon " is the particular divinity of these verse 
smackers ; they will address her as " chaste goddess of 
the realms of space," " pale roamer through the purple 
hollow night," and speak of her as being " chastely 
soft," or "serenely bright," or "coldly sad," and as 



PUFF-BALLS. 8 1 

"palpitating through the dark," " shimmering through 
the trees," and raining down silver and other mineral 
products. 

One enthusiast thus describes her : 

" Blue and weak — red within the East are met, 
Faint as the dyes that stain a sea-shell's whirl ; 
And low the slender crescent moon is set, 
Carved perfect from a single flawless pearl." 

Now I have no fault to find with the above species of 
Puff-balls, nor with the community for tolerating and 
encouraging them. Many of them are promising ap- 
prentices of the muse. They are harmless enough, and 
do no more injury to humanity than the restless insect 
buzzing over the summer stream ; in fact, they are 
amusing to watch in an idle moment. 

But what I do object to is the pretention and the 
extraordinary merit and recognition claimed by these 
dabsters above the rest of the human family, from the 
mere fact of their lucubrations being reduced to 
language and print. They produce nothing useful. 
Humanity is none the better for them, nor human 
progress advanced, nor care diminished by their buzzings 
and throbbings. Other people's brains throb, and they 
have thoughts ideal and practical, elevated or common- 
place, and various experiences, but do not deem it 
necessary to spread them before the community. Our 
poetaster, however, has no such modesty ; he insists 
upon buzzing in your ear. In due time, he folds his 
wings and passes into the everlasting Limbo, where 



82 PELICAN PAPERS. 

myriads of the kind lie, expecting translation upwards 
through the breath of posterity. 

When the literary Puff-ball produces an entire work, 
his main idea is to obtain notice from the critics of the 
press. If they are slow in coming, he manufactures 
them. The following is a sample of the usual modern 
newspaper laudation : 

" Surely this work is written by a practised hand ; 
there is wonderful delicacy and mastery of diction in 
nicely setting forth many shades of thought and feeling 
and also in describing manners and scenes. The story 
surprises by its remarkable ability which is proved by 
the manner in which it arrests attention." 

Or this : 

" It is a splendid novel, interesting and powerful, the 
heroine is a glorious creature, thrilling scenes abound in 
it, it will be wildly read and talked about, this summer. 
It never hangs fire for a page." 

Or this : 

" A most striking and original story. It is steeped 
in an airy and graceful humor ; but there is a tremen- 
dous reality in it, an earnestness of conviction and pur- 
that holds the reader fixed and and fascinated, like the 
wedding guest by the glittering eye of the ancient 
mariner." 

" The touches are so vivid, the figures so graphic, the 
earnestness so intense, that there can be little doubt 



PUFF-BALLS. 83 

that the portraits and scenes are all sketches from 
nature, by a singularly shrewd eye, and incisive hand." 

Another individual of this species of Puff-ball is the 
book-making traveler ; he who returns with a fit of 
literature, and thinks the busy world will be delighted 
with his personal impressions, and a repetition of what 
has been theretofore described ad nauseam by every 
three-months voyager who has flourished the goose 
quill. 

His stock of travels is generally in the form of letters 
to an unknown friend, and the opening chapter is in 
this style of literary skim milk. 

" On board ship. 
" My dear M. : 

" Here we are at sea, on board the good ship Utopia ; 
we left on the 12th, under a glorious sunshine, but the 
weather is now overcast, and a drizzle impending. The 
white caps are lively, and our fellow voyagers exhibit a 
variety of expression ; the inner man rebelling and 
forcing a feeble smile — some pale and limp are reclining 
on chairs — others staggering to the guards — all antici- 
pating the awful moment when, &c." 

It is curious that the literary traveler is not only 
anxious to let you know that he has seen certain things 
and to give you his views and impressions of them, but 
he is also very desirous that you should know the exact 
time of his seeing them, and the then existing state of 
the weather. He generally dates his visitation with 



84 PELICAN PAPERS. 

reference to the time of his meals, so that our informa- 
tion may be of the most precise and satisfactory char- 
acter, and .always interlards his travels in a foreign 
country with fragments of its language abstracted from 
the traveling phrase book. As for example, " After 
breakfast we proceeded to the Duomo ; a slight rain was 
falling which had no effect in damping our enthusiasm. 
So we started, in spite of good Giacomo's exclamation, 
' Fa cativissimo tiempo, excellentissima, per corpo de Bac- 
co ! 

" At the door we met the B s ; a sight of them 

brought memories of the dear land far away." 

" Leaving the cathedral, we proceeded to the Molo, 
and were besieged by beggars, in all shapes ; one poor 
fellow, on crutches, exclaimed, ' Car it a, serenissima mia t 
per V amore de Dio e latrinita sanctissima /' What a 
contrast to our own beloved land do we continually 
meet ; — all this endears me more and more to the home 
of the free, where the cegis of liberty," &c. 

The traveler in London also writes, 

" On Saturday night we reached the modern Baby- 
lon, and took lodgings at the Peagrim hotel, one of the 
finest I ever saw. It raining the next day, we hired a 
coach and went to service at Westminster, that glori- 
ous pile. This noble abbey was erected, &c. (Here 
copy a page from Murray's Guide Book :)" " It im- 
pressed us, &c." " The hallowed past, &c." 

" It raining also next day, and C. having a touch of 
her lumbago, we passed the day looking over maps and 



PUFF-BALLS. 85 

guides, and retired early, having dined gloriously on 
good old English mutton." Now here we have some 
fine historical facts ; among them that the author ar- 
rived at London on a Saturday, that the Peagrim hotel 
was one of the best he ever saw, that it rained Sunday 
and Monday ensuing ; that C. had a touch of her lum- 
bago, and that, on Monday, the author and Chad mut- 
ton for dinner. 

It is at the literary club, of which he has become a 
member, that this style of Puff-ball most effectually 
shines. I have him in my eye now — his name is 
Juriel Scrawler — called by himself J. Shakespeare 
Scrawler. 

Scrawler began as an humble literary plodder, and 
made a living, and even accumulated something from 
newspaper scrap work and school juveniles ; as soon, 
however, as he was admitted to the magazines and be- 
came convinced that he was a genius ; his dress and 
manners were arranged to give him a bizarre, dreamy 
and literary look. 

In time there came a positivism in his bearing and 
movements that challenged opposition and claimed 
consideration. He asserted his individuality in every 
movement ; his voice, when speaking in a room, was 
raised above others and claimed silence ; his style of 
speech became sententious, his opinions were given dog- 
matically ; and conversation was usually led by him to 
his personal experience or last literary production. His 
eye when in company rolled as if to sift all minds, or 
was fixed reflectively in mid air ; occasionally, he was 
morbidly silent and abstracted, as if he were pondering 



$6 PELICAN PAPERS. 

some theme sublimated ' beyond ordinary expression, 
and as if the topics afoot were beneath his regard ; at 
others, he was the arbiter of a circle of talkers and thun- 
dered among them like a Jupiter. 

heard, everywhere, that Scrawler was a great man, 
but was always somewhat puzzled to find the basis of 
the conclusion, although, I confess to have felt the effi- 
cacy of his presence, and considered that, when he was 
near, I was under a conventional obligation to feel my- 
self the subject of a slight shrinkage. 

By dint of plodding in libraries, copying from old 
models, and interpolating and skillfully dovetailing 
other people's ideas, and hammering out what brains 
he had, Scrawler has produced various works. 

His first publication was a rehash of certain juvenile 
poetical efforts termed " Spring water cresses " which, 
in the main, consisted of paraphrases, from certain for- 
gotten authors. 

This book hit the average taste, in the small villages 
and country towns, and was nimbly pushed by judicious 
puffing. 

Then Scrawler traveled, and became correspondent 
of a newspaper; and, on his return, after two months' 
absence, the correspondence with additions, was pub- 
lished, under the taking name of " Scrambles and 
Scrawls in many Lands." This contained heavy drafts 
upon guide books, encyclopaedias and old books of 
travel. Some of the lands described Scrawler had 
never visited, but his personal impressions and adven- 
tures therein were given in the most vivid manner in- 



PUFF-BALLS. S? 

eluding interviews with leading statesmen and titled 
and even royal personages. 

Other works followed in quick succession ; Scrawler, 
by pertinacity and assurance, became the favorite liter- 
ary hack of the book sellers ; his nimble brain, adaptive 
faculties and appropriative abilities, assisted by a corps 
of assistants, ground out literary work at the call of 
the publishers, to meet the taste of the day. 

Now, it was a novel illustrating the curious problems 
of French life ; now, it was a book of travels in Siberia ; 
now, it was a new life of the Christus, under a taking 
title ; now, it was a compendium of English literature ; 
now, it was an epic poem on revolutionary themes ; now, 
an essay on the radical tendencies of the time ; now, an 
attack on conservatism, as impeding the rights of man 
and human progress ; — Sometimes it was a new com- 
prehensive dictionary, or a new history of the world. 

Nothing was too high or too low for his genius. Tell 
him what you wanted and presto ! the literary job was 
done, on time, according to orders. I will give you a 
specimen of Scrawler's battle painting in one of his 
works describing the battle of Bautzen. 

Scrawler's only experience of military affairs had been 
the occasional witnessing of a military drill. That lim- 
itation, however, was no drawback to his genius, which 
thus thundered about the field of battle : 

" Meanwhile, the tremendous battery on the heights, 
as if on purpose to add horror to the scene, commenced 
its thunders, during the coming gloom of the scowling 
storm. Night and day, thereafter, the earth groaned 



88 PELICAN PAPERS. 

under its heavy and constant explosions ; while the 
cannon of the besieged answered, till there was one suc- 
cession of 'deafening thunder-claps over the devoted 
city which shook and trembled on its strong founda- 
tions ! Amid storms of sleet and hail — in the full blaze 
of the noon-tide sun, at solemn twilight, and at deep 
midnight, without cessation, for an entire week, that 
volcano thundered on, driving sleep from the alarmed 
inhabitants, while the bombs hissed and blazed above 
their dwellings and fell in their midst ; the heavy shot 
came crashing into their apartments, and the cry of 
" Fire ! " rung through every street. Now, on and on, 
swept the mighty mass supporting the besiegers, while 
from every cone-like hill that dotted the plain issued 
fire and smoke, as if a volcano were working there. 
Each dark summit suddenly became illuminated, while 
the guns, thundering at the heads of the columns be- 
low, lead them steadily on to the shock. The earth 
groaned under that heavy weight, and the deep roar 
that rose from its bosom rolled in ominous echoes over 
the heights ! Eight thousand cuirassiers encased in 
scintillant steel and sending back the beams of the set- 
ting sun in dazzling splendor from their polished hel- 
mets, swept with shouts to the onset. An interminable 
forest of bayonets glittered over their host, while be- 
tween, were long moving lines of light caused by the 
sunbeams corruscating on glistening armor and flashing 
sabre and glittering helm." 

By judicious puff-balling, and by the active efforts of 
his fellow Puff-balls belonging to the mutual admir- 
ation literary club called the " Apple Swimmers," 



PUFF-BALLS. 89 

Scrawler became so magnified in the eyes of the com- 
munity that he was foisted on it as an exceptional 
genius. 

He had his likeness taken on a large scale and placed 
in book stores, clubs and other conspicuous places ; he 
had himself fixed as orator for college anniversaries and 
charitable exhibitions, and worried the journalists into 
giving him, at least, a kick forward. 

He made it a point to attend complimentary dinners 
given to prominent men and to have newspaper slips 
of his remarks duly distributed. 

Scraps of his early verses he procured to be inserted 
with laudation, in periodicals, as if they were treasure 
trove. 

If any man of eminence died, Scrawler's muse 
pounced upon his life and memory like a ghoul ; and 
soon, the newspapers glowed with the poetic epicedium 
incidental to the event. Individually, nobody thought 
very much of Scrawler ; but multitudinously, they con- 
sidered him great, because it seemed to be the general 
opinion, and no one cared to dispute it. What he put 
forth, therefore, began to be considered as hors de con- 
cours, and not subject to criticism. 

Scrawler, in fine, so worked upon the community, es- 
pecially on those who did not think much about the 
matter, that he was accepted as the representative liter- 
ateur of his country. 

" He must be a great man," it was currently sup- 
posed, "or one would not hear so much about him." 

A recognition of his great powers was publicly made 
at a grand banquet set afoot by the prominent men of 



90 PELICAN PAPERS. 

his locality jogged on by Scrawler's backers ; it was a 
great success, because everybody of local prominence 
subscribed,- and attended, from fear that, if absent, they 
might lose their prestige as " literary " or " prominent " 
men. 

In due time, it was urged by Scrawler's particular 
friends, diligently set on by himself, that there should 
be some national recognition of Scrawler's great efforts 
in the cause of literature and human progress. He 
was exalted as a philosopher, a historian, a poet, a hu- 
manitarian, an orator, and a statesman ! " The literary 
community, — the republic of letters, must be recog- 
nized," it was urged. 

" Where could you find a more fitting representative 
through whom to do it honor than Scrawler ?" — " The 
country demanded his recognition !" 

The Government, in time, was so badgered and be- 
sieged by Scrawler and his friends that it, too, became 
inclined to believe that Scrawler was a great man, and 
that his appointment to some foreign mission would be 
the most creditable and popular thing that it could do. 

Scrawler, accordingly, is now abroad, as the represent- 
ative of this country, at the court of Brobdinagia, and 
hob-nobs with titled people to his heart's content. 

The last souvenir I have of Scrawler is comprehended 
in the following notice received by me, on the day be- 
fore he sailed : 



" On the occasion of the departure of the Hon. J. 
Shakespeare Scrawler, from Mongrelia, in the steamship 
" Parthia " on Saturday, March 14, the revenue cutter 



PUFF-BALLS. 9 1 

" Toadeater " and the steam tender " Puffer" will ac- 
company her to the outer light, in order to give some 
of Mr. Scrawler's friends an opportunity to wish him a 
parting "good-bye" on his departure to Europe to 
represent our country at the court of Brobdinagia. 

" You are respectfully invited, with the members of 
your family, to be present. 

" Invited guests will embark at 1 1 o'clock, promptly, 
and board the " Utopia " in the stream. 

" Snively M. Lathers, 
| To " of Committee. 

" Alfred Pelican, Esq." 



The next day I read the following account of the 
departure in one of the leading daily papers of Mon- 
grelia, by the " Jenkins " of the journal. 

" OFF IN THE UTOPIA." 

"The Hon. J. Shakespeare Scrawler's Departure 
for Europe." 

" The Hon. J. Shakespeare Scrawler sailed for Eu- 
rope on Saturday, by the steamer ■ Utopia.' He was 
found a few minutes after noon in his state-room, 
nearly amidship the vessel, surrounded by a great num- 
ber of our leading citizens, and also, by a number of 
friends, who had come expressly from the modern 
Athens, to pay their parting respects. The sharp, cold 
air of the river side had driven the party below decks, 
and it had left a faint rosy tint on the Hon. Mr. 
Scrawler's nose and chin. 



92 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" ' These are rather narrow quarters to receive in,' 
said the Hon. Mr. Scrawler, with a pleasant smile, ' but 
it was too cold to stay on deck.' 

" ' And in the main saloon,' whispered one of the 
Boston gentlemen, ' Mr. Scrawler found himself annoyed 
by the stares of a lot of operatic people who seem to be 
seeing somebody off. So we came in here.' 

" ' Yes,' said the Hon. Mr. Scrawler, nodding his 
head, ' we came in here to see our friends quietly.' 

" ' Do you expect to be long abroad?' asked the re- 
porter, vaguely. 

" ' That depends upon my Government, you know,' 
responded Mr. Scrawler, with his new diplomatic smile 
and an elevation of the eyebrows. ' We public men 
are not our own masters.' 

" ' Are you subject to sea-sickness ?' then remarked 
our reporter. 

" ' Now don't talk of such disagreeable things,' said 
the Hon. Mr. Scrawler, merrily. ' And you,' added he 
archly, ' must not interview me. Remember that I am 
an author. You must never interview authors, Look 
at my flowers.' 

" The state-room was full of flowers. The berths, the 
sofa, and the circular spaces incasing the deadeyes were 
crammed with elaborate bouquets. Against the parti- 
tion wall rested a large anchor made of white camellias 
and yellow roses, and on the washstand stood a floral 
steamship freighted with exotics, and puffiing out a 
cloud of smoke, artfully composed of one large calla. 

" ' Perhaps you are fond of flowers,' said the Hon.. 
Mr. Scrawler. ' My friends have been so thoughtful in 



PUFF-BALLS. 93 

that respect. Those who could not come in person to 
say good-bye sent these remembrances instead.' 

" ' Beautiful ! ' said the reporter. 

Bowing blandly, Mr. Scrawler stooped and pulled a 
yellow rosebud out of one of the anchor's flukes, and, 
with a frank smile that contained not the least trace of 
self-consequence, he pinned it to the lapel of the re- 
porter's overcoat. 

" The Hon. Mr. Scrawler wore a fur trimmed pelisse 
of a dark gray stuff, corresponding well in tone with his 
neatly brushed hair and whiskers. Beneath the open 
pelisse appeared a plaid cutaway coat, tightly fitting 
his form. A jaunty sealskin cap sat negligently upon 
one side of his head. His eyeglasses were gold rimmed. 
The attention which Mr. Scrawler received from his 
friends, especially those from Boston, plainly evinced 
the admiration with which he is regarded. When he 
signified that the air in the state-room was becoming 
oppressively warm, a dozen hands were outstretched to 
remove the pelisse from his shoulders and place it in the 
upper berth. 

" The Hon. Mr. Scrawler's complexion is fresh and 
smooth for a man of his age, and his head is poised 
upon a neck as shapely as that of the celebrated Pan in 
the Vatican. There is a robust beauty in his hands 
and ears that indicates great inherent power. His 
voice is loud, but slightly musical. It is difficult to de- 
scribe the grace of contour and vivacity of manner that 
distinguish the Hon. Mr. Scrawler above all other 
American publicists. No one, who gazed upon him on 
Saturday, could, for a moment, doubt that he is one of 



94 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the most distinguished-looking, as he is one of the most 
remarkable of our public men — one whom his country 
indeed delights to honor. 

" A recent photograph, cabinet size, taken by Kurz, 
gives the best idea of the physical attractiveness of the 
Hon. Mr. Scrawler. Just before the " Utopia " left the 
pier he distributed several copies of this admirable like- 
ness among his friends. Copies of the same photograph 
are, or ought to be obtainable at the shops of the dealers. 

" As the tug left the noble ship, as she gallantly 
steamed on her course, three hearty cheers were given 
by the party of friends who returned by the tug, 
which were responded to, with sprightly enthusiasm, by 
the hundreds of passengers on the steamer. The Hon. 
Mr. Scrawler stood on an elevated platform on the 
poop of the gallant vessel, and waved his red handker- 
chief heartily, but with perceptible emotion. The band 
on the tug struck up the national anthem ' Yankee 
Doodle,' as the tug turned around on her homeward 
course to the city, and the health of our noble repre- 
sentative to Brobdinagia was drunk by the invited 
guests, with many a three times three, as they discussed 
the various good things that had been generously pro- 
vided by the committee. Not an incident occurred to 
mar the pleasure of the occasion, and all united in say- 
ing that it was not only one of the most agreeable ex- 
cursions ever made in our harbor, but a fitting tribute 
to one of the most distinguished and high-toned of our 
fellow-citizens, and one at whose exalted position not 
only the republic of letters, but the country at large, 
may justly feel proud." 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 



I have often wondered at the persistence with which 
divers old images retain their exalted position. 

There was a whimsical fellow named Milton, for ex- 
ample, who is placed on a high pinnacle by reason of a 
poetical composition called " Paradise Lost." He had 
trouble to procure its publication. At first, all the re- 
muneration he obtained was five pounds ; and the copy- 
right sold for only eight. He had not yet become an 
image. If alive, now-a-days, think you, would not he 
be troubled, although an established image, to find a 
purchaser ? Would not a modern publisher consider 
that a translation illustrating the peculiar phases of 
modern Gallic life and character, or a romance of the 
English colliery pit, or race-horse school would stand a 
better chance to reach a second edition ? This stately 
Epopee is a work giving food for reflection as to the 
lengths to which a highly sublimated and idealized im- 
agination may transport its possessor out of the realms 
of the logical and the plausible. 

It is an instance of the skittish Pegasus being lashed 
and lathered into such a state of excitement and cari- 
coling as to make him take the bit in his teeth and run 
away with his rider. 

The earth was not extensive enough to work out our 
eccentric bard's conceits. He required Chaos, Heaven 



0.6 PELICAN PAPERS. 

and Hell, as pieds-a-terre ; and his muse, he says, was to 
pursue "things unattainable, yet, in prose or rhyme." 
For this purpose are enlisted, as machinery and figur- 
ants, deities, angels, devils, monsters, thrones, domin- 
ions, powers and princes, as well as men, and all the 
above personages talk together in the English language 
not only on supernal, and infernal affairs, but of matters 
of modern history, geography, biology, philosophy and 
theology, long before those things became topics of con- 
versation : in other words, they commit the most lu- 
dicrous parachronisms. 

Chesterfield wrote to his booby boy that he thought 
the moralities of the poem queer, inasmuch as the devil 
is the hero of the epic, and is made quite successful. 
That personage, in the poem, certainly carries out his 
plan very thoroughly, and for the matter of that, it is 
supposed, does it very frequently. 

I have sometimes taken up this production with a 
suspicion that critics have been mistaken about it, and 
that Milton intended it for a highly humorous and sat- 
irical composition of the burlesque order. As for the 
reverence and religious feeling in the book there 
are two sides to that question ; unexampled liberties 
and familiarities are taken with serious things and per- 
sonages, to carry out our poet's fantastical ideas and 
whimsical notions. 

But what could you expect of a man who started a 
Puritan, became then a thorough-paced Calvinist ; then 
took a strong dose of Arminianism, then flourished as 
an Independent, then as an Anabaptist ; subsequently 
moved over to the Arians ; and finally, threw them all 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 97 

overboard and declined to worship with any sect or 
community, whatsoever? In other words, he preferred 
to paddle his own cosmogenetical and theological canoe ; 
and a pretty mess he made of it, as exemplified in the 
poetical olla podrida alluded to. 

Can anything be more humorous and fantastical, for 
example, than the metaphorical exordium of the poem, 
wherein an appeal is made to an egg-hatching spirit, 
who, 

" From the first wast present, and with mighty 
wings outspread, 
Dove-like, sats't brooding o'er the vast abyss, 
And mads't it pregnant." 

This is either the height of humor or the depth of 
bathos. 

After considerable morbidly comic, apologetic rum- 
blings and grumblings at the hard job he has before 
him, our bard introduces us to his hero, the Devil. 
That personage has, for an unsuccessful rebellion, 
been "hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal 
sky," and is now uncomfortably sitting in a furnace, as 
described, without bottom, but on all sides flaming with 
fire ; he, therefore, must have been clinging to the sides 
like a fly; he is, moreover, bound with chains of that 
peculiar hitherto undiscovered substance called ada- 
mant ; and finding himself next to his chief lieutenant, 
Beelzebub, who is in the same predicament, they begin 
a colloquy upon their uncomfortable situation, and like 
all convicts, under the circumstances, concoct some 
plan of escape. Satan, during this colloquy, to rest 



98 PELICAN PAPERS. 

himself, " lays prone on the flood of fire, with head up- 
lift above the waves, as big as a leviathan." 

He, finally, with his companion, in spite of the " ada- 
mantine chains," and without any trouble whatever, 
extends his wings and lights on dry land, the seat of an 
extinct volcano which is described as " Hell," and he 
takes possession of that sulphureous kingdom, with the 
philosophic reflection that although it is highly unat- 
tractive, it is better to reign there than serve in heaven, 
and that he will try his luck again with the celestial 
forces. With that purpose, he determines to summon 
again his old diabolic troops. 

Beelzebub approves of the plan, and Satan moves 
away on a recruiting expedition ; but having little con- 
fidence in Beelzebub, and from fear that that worthy 
might clandestinely hit him in the rear, as he moves 
off, he takes the precaution to hang behind him his 
shield, which is described as big as the moon, wJien seen 
through a telescope. Now this is a highly comical com- 
parison — and is about as lucid as saying that it was as 
big as a piece of chalk, for it is evident to the most or- 
dinary observer, that the size in question would depend 
on the magnifying power of the telescope and the op- 
tical powers of the observer. 

We also are told that, as the soles of Satan's feet 
were somewhat tender, from walking about in that " tor- 
rid clime," he had to lean on his spear to support his 
" uneasy steps over the burning marl." The question 
here naturally presents itself, why, if he were so inca- 
pacitated from locomotion and his feet troubled him, 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 99 

did not Satan take the easier method of flying, and so 
avoid the " burning marl?" 

Our author, however, is not of a practical turn of 
mind, and not very ingenious in extracting his charac- 
ter out of physical difficulties. 

His mind is too sublimated to meet the usual claims 
of reason, or else, it favors his characters being kept in 
a continual "pickle." 

In describing the numbers of the Devil's followers, 
our bard uses the well-known but whimsical compari- 
son, that they were "thick as autumnal leaves that 
strew the brooks of Vallombrosa." This is a celebrated 
simile, deemed, in fact, quite wonderful ; it has made 
Vallombrosa celebrated : but I ask you, calmly, to re- 
flect as to its propriety. It is the comparison of one 
thing with another thing, which latter thing did not 
come into existence until, as geologists tell us, millions 
of years after the first thing. Our poet evidently intro- 
duces Vallombrosa without regard to its congruity, but 
because it was a good quadri-syllable, just as after- 
wards, in many instances, he quite as whimsically lugs 
in his geographical learning to make pompous melliflu- 
ous verse, as for example : 

" Mombaza and Miloa, and Melind, 
And Sofala, through Ophir, to the realm, 
Of Congo and Angola farthest south ; 
Or then from Niger flood to Atlas Mount, 
The kingdoms of Almansor, Fez and Sus. 
Morocco and Algiers and Tremisen." 



100 PELICAN PAPERS. 

As another example of this geographical style, we 
also read : 

" And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebisond ; 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, 
When Charlemange with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabia." 

Elsewhere we read : 

" Of mightiest empire from the destined walls 
Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian can, 
And Sarmacand by Oxus, Temir's throne, 
To Paquin of Sinaen kings, and thence 
To Agra and Lahore of great Mogul 
Down to the golden Chersonese, or where 
The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since 
In Hispahan, or where the Russian czar 
In Moscow, or the sultan in Bizance 
Turchestan born. Nor could his eye not ken 
Th' empire of Negus to his utmost port 
Ercoco, and the less maritime kings, 

. Mombaza, and Quiloa and Melind." 

But we must pardon our distressed poet his modern 
comparisons and similes ; because there was actually 
nothing in the chaotic, incoherent, aerial and infernal 
wildernesses in which he was groping to make a simile 
with. No wonder that he had to thumb his geography 
and atlas for sonorous polysyllabics. 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. IOI 

This, however, is an easy matter ; anybody can do it. 
I will take my Atlas and give you, with no trouble what- 
ever, something of the same kind. I am describing for 
example, one of the Devil's flights, along, if you chose, 
the Andes : 

" Now wandering wnere giant Andes stretch 
From Patagonia to the Carib sea — 
Poised over Imbaburas smouldering pyre, 
Sanga and Cayambi, or the dome 
Of Chimborazo — or, on restless wing, 
Where Cotopaxi sheds a liquid fire 
Adown his wrinkled sides — while far beneath 
His snowy girdle glistens argentine, 
Or glowing like a belt of radiant gold ; 
Or iris-tinted, where th' inferior heat 
Resolves the streamlets loosened from his grasp ; 
Which stealing down his sides, on East or West, 
These, Esmeraldas, in his outflow bears, 
Pacific's tribute ; — while, those, 
Flowing harmonious, swelling Napo's flood 
Fall smiling in the Amazon. 
Now, Tuncuragua, all his thunders dead, 
Welcomes thee, grimly — 
Where the lone condor, mid the horrid crags 
Of Cordilleras, feeds his rugged young, 
And the twin ranges hold the tabled plain, 
Far stretching north and south, of Desguadero ; 
And mighty glaciers sleep along the ribs 
Of adamantine keeps that hold within 
Emerald, and gold, and wealth of Cinnabar. 



102 PELICAN PAPERS. 

Then Acon-ca-gua, giant of them all, 
Beholds thee circling by his sides serate, ; 
While far beyond the heights of Archidone, 
And Otavala, with its forest vales, 
The giant subjects of the monarch stand — 
Antuco, Villarica and Maypu ; — 
Breathing their fiery incense to the clouds — 
And there Osorno — Tupungato there — 
Towers impregnable — barriers of the sea 
And guarding Valparaiso. 

Or let us take the Devil, for a change of air, to the 
Himalayas. 

Out with our Atlas, and we have : 

Now o'er the Karakoran heights, 

That bound Cashmere thou gazest pendulous, 

Where Riman-dahan scents his mountain prey 

Amid the shivering firs and time-worn peaks 

Of Himalaya — stretching far 

Their hoary grandeur to where Indus winds 

His tortuous course, through gorge and chasm, and bloom 

Of vales of roses, banyan, and pipal- — 

Ishardo and Hussora and Balmeer, — 

And through the trackless deserts of Bawhlpoor, 

Through Dawan, Mooltan, and the Scinde, 

Down to the Indian sea. 

Mais revonons a notre diable. 

We are next told that he roared so loudly after his 
"princes, potentates and warriors," his co-devils, whom, 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. IO3 

perpetrating a grim joke, he sarcastically called " the 
flower of heaven," that all Hell resounded with his 
bellowings. 

So potent was his roar that the princes, potentates 
and warriors aforesaid, although securely transfixed 
with chained thunderbolts, to the bottom of the gulf, 
sprung up, upon the wing, like " a pitchy flock of 
locusts," until they finally lit on the " firm brimstone." 

Our humorous bard now gives a description of this 
crew, who were as heterogeneous in their appearance 
and appurtenances as were Falstaff's recruits. First, 
there was Moloch, who, we are told, was covered with 
blood and " parents' tears ! " 

Now, pray, Mr. Milton, how could he be covered with 
parents' tears, when there were no parents in those 
days, and never had been ? This is a sad slip. Moloch 
was attended by a drum corps and cymbal players. 

Next came Chemos, alias Peor, dancing in a wanton 
way, like a he goat. 

Then Baalim and Ashtaroth, a pair of hermaphrodite 
Siamese twins, who had neither gristle nor bones, and 
kept changing their size and shape in dilating and con- 
centrating like sun fishes, in a most comical manner, 
" and either sex assumed or both." What a treasure 
for a traveling circus ! 

Then came a female warrior, Astoreth or Astarte, 
with a pair of horns on her head. She was at the head 
of the battering ram department. 

Then came a fighting character, Thammuz, still suffer- 
ing from a wound that " ran purple to the sea," but 
eager for the fray. What sea? Mr. Milton, pray, what sea ? 



104 PELICAN PAPERS. 

Next we have Dagon, carrying his head under his 
arm, for the very satisfactory reason that he had no 
hands ; we are also gravely told that this individual was 
half fish, and flopped along with his tail. 

Take him all in all, he could not have been a very 
formidable antagonist. Next came Rimmon, who is 
deemed indescribable, Osiris, Iris and Orus, with a body 
of taterdemalion nondescripts ; and then Belial sup- 
ported by a noisy troop of Roysterers, in modern times 
familiarly known as "sons of Belial." 

Next came several Ionian gods, prominent among 
whom is Titan with an enormous brood, and then the 
rank and file, who were, apparently, not in dry fighting 
humor, for we were told they were " downcast and 
damp " — which is rather strange, considering that they 
were standing on hot brimstone and breathing flames 
of sulphur ; but as we have before stated, congruity is 
not one of our bard's strong points. 

This queer army being assembled to the sound of 
trumpets, we are informed that a tall fellow named 
Azazel, hoisted Satan's flag, and the army raised their 
spears and shields, somebody struck up a march on the 
" flute," and they hobbled along " with painful steps 
o'er the burnt soil," while Satan, tall as a tower, stood 
still and counted them, although he was surrounded by 
a mist, and must have found it a troublesome job, under 
the circumstances, particularly as his face was covered 
with thunder scars, and an old lady named " Care " had 
taken her seat on his " faded cheek," to see the proces- 
sion. 

Satan's speech to his army, although belligerent in its 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 105 

nature, could not have inspired them with much cour- 
age, for we learn that he was blubbering and groaning 
during his entire delivery. Afterwards in a golden tab- 
ernacle illuminated by very vivid petroleum lamps, "fed 
with naptha and asphaltus" — which was ycleped Pande- 
monium, a solemn council was held and all the chief 
devils therein assembled coming like " bees in spring 
time," and the place being not large enough to hold 
them all, each gigantic imp, in a fine spirit of accom- 
modation, contracted himself into desirable dimensions 
to adapt himself to the size of the building, and squat- 
ted on a golden bench. 

The determination of the council held on the occa- 
sion is not a very heroic one ; the conclusion being, 
that instead of fighting Heaven directly, they would 
make an attack upon its last creation, poor Adam and 
Eve, in Paradise, and either drive out those " puny 
habitants" and lay waste the newly-created earth 
with hell fire ; or, if not that, to seduce A. and E., and 
bring them over to their party. This, they concluded, 
would surpass common revenge and would confound 
the race of mankind " in one root " — and mingle Earth 
with Hell. 

This great job is undertaken by the Devil himself in 
person, and he directs the others to amuse themselves 
as best they may, while he goes about it. 

The amusements, we are humorously told, consist in 
racing with each other on the top of whirlwinds, sham 
fights with sulphur and brimstone, firing rocks and hills 
at each other, going on voyages of discovery along the 
Styx and Acheron, stopping at Lethe for refreshments. 



106 PELICAN PAPERS. 

while some demons engage in philosophic discussions 
on Providence, free will, foreknowledge, fixed fate, pas- 
sion and apathy, and other theological doctrinal ab- 
stractions. 

Devils still discuss these things. 

So far as the earth is concerned they are not them- 
selves heard or seen, but perform through mundane in- 
struments, by the process of infusion. 

Doctrinal abstractions are still argued with a zeal 
that is blind and deaf, as well as devilish. 

Nothing will stop a man's ears, close his eyes, and 
shut his heart so effectually as a religious conviction on 
a matter whose truth or falsity is not susceptible of 
proof. 

He will argue on the basis of a prejudice, a tradition, 
or a fantasy, as if they were facts ; and fight for his as- 
sumed dogma with more courage, zeal and energy than 
he would for his own temporal or spiritual salvation. 

In fact, he will damn himself that he may uphold a 
doctrine. 

I assert that Calvin is now in one of the pits of Tar- 
tarus for his horrible persecution and burning of Ser- 
vetus — or ought to be — unless a devil was working in 
him and he was morally irresponsible. If not, let him 
seethe there, with Torquemada and his inquisitors, until 
their bloody zeal is boiled out of them. 

The narrative of the expedition of Satan to the earth 
by our author is a fine piece of comic writing. 

He starts off on wings, and in time, reaches " hell 
bounds," extending up to the roof of which were nine 
gates of different metals. 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 107 

In getting out of these he had to pass, on one side, 
an immoral old lady who kept the keys, whose nether 
half resembled a fish ; around her waist was a snake, 
and on the other side a phantasmatic individual, black 
as night, but without any shape, whose only amuse- 
ment was pointing his dart at wayfarers and grinning 
horribly a ghastly smile. 

Satan was so indignant at the opposition of these 
disreputable people that he " burned like a comet." 
After threatening them with confusion and frowning 
terribly, the old lady, who turned out to be an old 
sweetheart of his, finally put the key in the locks and 
turned the gates with a sound that shook the " lowest 
bottom of Erebus." 

Satan's journey through the realms of chaos, night 
and discord was a complicated and troublesome affair; 
something like a frog's through a bog ; for we are told 
that with head, hands, wings or feet, he pursues his 
way ; " and swims, or sinks, or wades or creeps or flies." 
There being no guide-posts, he had to ask his way of 
one Uriel, whom he visited, en route, and who was lo- 
cated in the orb of the sun, and had a special charge 
to keep that luminary bright and in good working 
order. 

Although Uriel, as our bard informs us, was the 
sharpest sighted spirit of all heaven, Satan completely 
outwitted him, and palming himself off as an angel of 
high degree, and receiving the required direction, he 
slid down the ecliptic, and in due time lit on Mount 
Niphates ; and then with a hop, skip and jump at one 
slight bound, we are told, " overleaping all bound of 



108 PELICAN PAPERS. 

hill or highest wall " vaulted into that celebrated horti- 
cultural establishment — the garden of Eden. 

Now, of the wonders of this place and of the beauty 
of those two wretched unclad people Adam and Eve, 
and of their billings and cooings, as described by our 
queer author, and of their enjoyment of their sports of 
the arena much might be said. As to the latter sports 
there must have been a regular performing circus, for 
we are told that " about them sporting," 

" The lion ramped, and in his paw 
Dandled the kid ; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, 
Gambol'd before him ; th' unwieldly elephant 
To make them mirth used all his might, and wreathed 
His lithe proboscis ; " 

I say of these delights and how the happy pair trim- 
med the trees and indulged in light gardening, and 
chewed the " savory pulp of nectarines " and "scooped 
the running stream with the rhind " ; and how they en- 
joyed their nuptial bower of laurel and myrtle and alan- 
thus and roses and crocuses, which bovver, we are, told, 
was so very blessedly private that even the bugs did 
not dare to enter unless they were specially invited, it 
would be too tedious to enumerate in detail. Nor have 
we time to treat of the wonderful conversations on 
Natural History, Astronomy and Philosophy between 
Adam and his celestial visitors, each with a triple pair 
of wings and as many colors as a cockatoo. 

There was one very ungallant remark, however, made 
by our author by the mouth of Adam, in a conversa- 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. IO9 

tion with the archangel Raphael, which with other sim- 
ilar remarks deserves reprobation. It was doubtless 
the reason why the fair sex are indisposed to support 
our bard's pretentions to be a first-class " image." Adam 
says of Eve, when describing her to Raphael : 

" For well I understand, in the prime end, 
Of Nature, her tti inferior, in the mind 
And inward faculties ; 
Wisdom in discourse with her 
Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows." 

Is there any wonder that, with such sentiments as 
these, our author's first wife, Mary Powell, refused to 
talk to him, and became " a mute spiritless mate" and 
left the conceited fellow, after a month's sojourn, for 
the more lively atmosphere of her cavalier father's 
house? 

This idea of Adam beginning to set himself up as the 
superior being, when the world was hardly a year old, 
is doubtless, to the female mind, preposterous, and one 
of the most absurd things in the book. 

No wonder that our poet's daughters, who had to act 
as amanuenses of such horrible diatribes against the sex, 
used to flounce out of the room, and tell him that he 
had better get a third wife to do his dirty work ; and so 
indeed he did ; but number three very soon gave him 
to understand who was the superior being in that house 
at least. 

Among Raphael's conversations with Adam we have 
an account of some of the terrible bloodless battles 



IIO PELICAN PAPERS. 

which culminated in Satan's defeat, and his ignominious 
ejectment from the high circles in which he had at first 
moved. 

The very comical part of these battles is that the 
combatants on either side, although they were armed 
with all sorts of terrible weapons and defensive armor, 
were incapable, from their spiritual constitution, of 
either giving or receiving injury. Our author quietly 
and somewhat obscurely informs us of this in a sort of 
" aside." He evidently found the matter was a trouble- 
some one to handle. 

The celestial forces assembled at the sound of a loud 
ethereal trumpet, and, under the leadership of field 
marshals Gabriel, Michael and Abdiel, marched on the 
air, to meet Satan's troops, who are armed and equip- 
ped with offensive and defensive implements of the 
most approved modern description. 

We are next entertained with a humorous descrip- 
tion of a hand-to-hand combat between Satan and Ab- 
diel, Satan being particularly moved thereto by A. 
stepping out of the opposing ranks and calling him, S., 
a fool ; Satan, having no sooner spiritedly responded 
that he, A., was another, than A. let him, S., have a 
terrific whack on his cranium, that knocked him back 
ten feet, amid loud cheers from the celestial ranks. 

Before Satan, however, could get in his " one, two," 
in return, Michael ordered a general advance, which 
mutually took place and made such a " horrid shock, 
clamor of storming fury and horrible discord " that our 
poor poet fairly sweats under it, for a simile. 

The best he can do for us is to say that " all Heaven 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. Ill 

resounded, and had Earth been there, Earth would, (in 
his opinion), have resounded too," and " to her centre 
shook." 

We are then, with a fine burlesque humor, and a 
beautiful use of the figure, termed by rhetoricians, me- 
tonymy, told that the wheels of the brazen chariots got 
" mad " and " raged around " ; that fiery darts " hissed 
about in flaming volleys ; that fire " raged overhead " ; 
that arms and armor clashed and " brayed " ; that the 
fight was sometimes on firm ground and sometimes on 
the wing, so that the very air was tormented and " storm- 
ing fury " rose and got out of the way ! Amid all this 
dangerous concentration of destructive forces, we are 
informed that among the angelic people there was " no 
thought of flight, none of retreat, no unbecoming deed 
that argued fear, and that deeds of eternal fame were 
done." 

Our high appreciation of this heroic courage and ex- 
alted action is somewhat diminished by the reflection 
that neither spirits celestial nor infernal " could receive, 
in their liquid texture, mortal wound no more than 
could the " fluid air," and that they " limbed them- 
selves as they pleased," and " color and or size assume, 
as likes them best, condense or rare." Their courage, 
therefore, does not seem of a very heroic grade ; but 
our poet likes to describe massive shields and thunder- 
ing chariots and flaming spears and terrific combats, 
and, in fact, if he were deprived of the bellicose ele- 
ments of his piece it would be rather tame, for, I am 
sure, one would tire of hearing about the angels " reclin- 
ing at banquets crowned with flowers," and " drinking 



112 PELICAN PAPERS. 

wine from grapes grown in Heaven out of goblets made 
of pearl and gold and diamonds." 

While these terrible operations were going on F. M, 
Michael was, with a huge two-handed sword, felling 
whole squadrons at once. Insomuch, however, as they 
immediately got on their legs and wings again, the re- 
sults were not very conclusive. Satan, however, think- 
ing that Michael had obtained glory enough from his 
sword exercise, interposed one of his celebrated shields, 
which, we are now told was a " rocky orb of tenfold ad- 
amant." And each of the heroes now thinking to 
frighten the other, "waved their fiery swords," and in 
the air made " horrid circles." 

Soon, however, Michael, whose sword had been made 
in a superior armory, cut Satan's sword in two, and 
pricked that gentleman under the fifth rib and then 
sliced him clean into halves. 

But now, mark the resources of the poet ; although 
he tells us that the " girding sword with discontinuous 
wound passed through " our hero, yet " th' ethereal sub- 
stance closed, not long divisible," and Satan was, in a 
few minutes quite himself again, although somewhat 
demoralized. 

Moloch, too, although cloven to the chine by Gabriel, 
nimbly united himself, but being rather troubled by the 
operation, " fled bellowing !" 

Meanwhile, Adramelech and Asmodeus got all they 
wanted from Ariel and Raphael ; and the doughty Ab- 
diel, in his turn, made short work of Ariel, Arioch, and 
Ramiel, which latter individual he not only cut into 
mince meat, but scorched and roasted on the spot ! 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 113 

Things were now looking rather black for the Devil's 
party, but night came on and made a truce. Satan 
thereupon made a speech of encouragement to his 
forces, urging them, as nobody was hurt, to try it again ; 
and sagaciously remarked that, since it was found that 
their empyreal form's were incapable of mortal injury, 
and " though pierced with wounds, soon closing, and by 
native vigor healed," under the circumstances, they 
could afford to be courageous and try a little more 
fighting. 

As more forcible arms, however, were considered 
necessary, it was suggested, in one of the most comical 
conceptions of the poem that, as fire and brimstone, and 
cold steel had not succeeded that the Devil's legions 
should try cannon and gunpowder! 

We are gravely told that, thereupon, the spirits of 
evil went to work, and digging out of the ground nitre 
and sulphur, concocted gunpowder and made hollow 
engines, long and round which they then rammed and 
" made pregnant with infernal flame." 

From a triple mounted row of these " pillars laid on 
wheels," on the application to each, of a reed tipped 
with fire, a terrible fusilade was opened on the celestial 
ranks, which had come unsuspectingly near, and had 
merely anticipated the usual harmless sword and spear 
exercise. The effect of the artillery was terrible, indeed, 
and our poet racks his imagination for words and similes 
to do it justice. In a magnificent strain of hyperbole 
and some fine physiological figures, he tells us that 
all Heaven seemed " belched out of those deep-throated 
engines "; their roar fairly " took the bowels out of the air, 



114 PELICAN PAPERS. 

and tore its (the air's) entrails and scattered them;" 
" the sky seemed to rain chained thunderbolts and iron 
globes "; the celestial fighters " though standing else like 
rocks " were, by the engines aforesaid, knocked over 
like nine-pins, and thousands of angels on angels rolled, 
more scared than they had ever been before or since. 

" Foul dissipation " followed, we are told, and a 
forced rout of the celestial army. 

What was now to be done ? Was the Devil to tri- 
umph through gunpowder and the whole scheme of 
creation and its consequences to be set at nought by 
villainous nitre and saltpetre ? Not so : our poet was 
equal to the occasion ; he had not exhausted his re- 
sources ; he had a trump card yet in store. 

The celestial party threw away their arms and " light 
as the lightning glimpse " they rah to certain hills con- 
veniently near, which, with their load of rocks, waters, 
and woods, they plucked from their foundations and 
hurled them at the wooden artillery ; they hurled, also, 
main promontories which opened whole armed legions, 
and crushed them until they had time to resume their 
shapes again. 

The other side, also, now found it necessary to try 
the same heavy ammunition " and the neighboring hills 
encountered the other hills in air " " with a jaculation 
dire" and, of course, under the circumstances, " horrid 
confusion upon confusion rose," and all Heaven would 
surely have gone to wrack, had not some higher celes- 
tial machinery interfered and a superior divinity in a 
chariot was sent forth armed with a bow and quiver, 
abundantly supplied with " three-bolted thunder," to 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 115 

pursue those sons of darkness. This chariot rolled, as 
with the sound " of torrent floods, and the whole em- 
pyrean shook throughout, under the burning wheels." 

No wonder that, at this strange sight the uprooted 
hills now " retired each to his place." 

Ten thousand thunderbolts were now let loose on the 
rebels, which soon " rooted them out of Heaven " and 
drove them into the bottomless pit. " Old Chaos con- 
founded, roared" and Hell, although it at first objected 
and tried to run away, at last, under outside pressure, 
yawning, received the whole flying multitude within her 
dark foundations, and disburdened Heaven rejoiced, and 
soon repaired her mural breech ! 

WHEW ! Phew ! says the reader, with a sigh of re- 
lief, as he emerges from this sulphureous, pyroligneous, 
hill-throwing conflict. 

It is a relief, after the above, to step into the garden 
of Eden, and hear the birds sing, and inhale the odor of 
the shrubs and flowers, violets and hyacinth, and As- 
phodel and amaranth. 

It would be a long story, however, to follow our poet 
into all the details of life in Paradise, and review with 
him the contemptible, sneaking, operations of Satan in 
circumventing our unsuspecting female parent as she 
was taking a quiet morning walk in the groves. 

I am sorry to record that according to our ungallant 
bard, flattery working upon the love of admiration, was 
the instrumentality employed to decoy the original fe- 
male, who became seized with a desire to extend her 
sphere of conquest under the influence of the following 
diabolic words used by the insinuating fiend : 



Il6 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" One man except, 
Who sees thee? and what is one? who should'st 

be seen 
A goddess among gods ! adored and served 
By angels numberless, thy daily train." 

We might here stop to moralize over the fact that 
this process of the Evil One is still kept up, in spite of 
the lapse of ages. 

He has, still, the meanness, instead of openly fight- 
ing man, to undermine him through man's susceptibli- 
ity towards Eve's fair representatives. 

The diabolical performances of the Garden of Eden 
still repeat themselves. 

The morbid curiosity to know and find out, the rest- 
less taste to eat what is forbidden, and the desire to be 
admired by somebody beside " Adam," even if he is 
the devil himself, seem to be still characteristics of the 
" weaker vessel " — and, what is more — the power still 
remains to influence and drag in poor Adam's descend- 
ants even to their own perdition. 

The flaming sword of Gabriel, the curative influence 
of time, the certainty of retribution, the denunciations 
of the old, and the lessons of the new teaching, the 
warnings of experience, and the lucubrations of philos- 
ophy do not seem to have altered this, one jot or tittle. 

As a first effect of the eating of the fruit, we are told, 
that, . 

" Earth trembled from her entrails, as again 
In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan." 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 117 

The effects of the eating of the fruit upon the trans- 
gressors also were quite remarkable, although not quite 
so terrible ; I refer the reader to the poem for further 
light on the subject. 

Our. poet would better have left these latter effects 
for such a realist as his brother poet Bocaccio to de- 
scribe. 

The winding up of the events treats of mutual re- 
proaches between the parties. Eve gives Adam a 
sound lecture for not having prevented her from grati- 
fying her curiosity and getting into such a scrape ; at 
which poor Adam moralizes thus : 

" Thus it shall befall 
Him, who, to worth in women ever trusting, 
Lets her will rule, restraint she will not brook, 
And, left to herself, if evil thence ensue, 
She first his weak indulgence will accuse." 

Adam, you were right.' The doom you pronounced 
has fallen, and the curtain lecture often testifies to the 
irrationality or — may I say it? — the want of justice of 
Eve's descendants. 

"/ told you so," is the thunderbolt they let fly at 
man's devoted head, after he has been over-persuaded 
to let them have their own way, and follow their ex- 
travagant inclinations. 

" It 's all your fault " is the logical diatribe they apply 
to heal his troubles brought on by their own insensate 
determination. And yet, in these latter days, in spite 
of this terrible story and its consequences, they arrogate 



Il8 PELICAN PAPERS. 

superiority, and claim that they are qualifed to con- 
trol social, moral, and even political affairs — " Credat 
Judaeus Apella !" 

We are next told that Satan gave a grand congratu- 
latory banquet in Pandemonium, to celebrate his vic- 
tory over Earth and Heaven. 

Among the distinguished persons present were those 
abstract individuals called " thrones, dominations, 
princedoms, virtues, powers." 

The chair was taken, at an early hour, by Satan him- 
self. 

He gave a full resumi 'of his famous expedition, and 
boasted how, on account of a paltry fruit, he had made 
celestial powers give up to him, while all the punish- 
ment for the temptation, had been imposed upon a 
beggarly snake. 

In spite of Satan's eloquence, our bard informs us 
that his speech was received with a universal hiss, and 
the meeting broke up in disorder. 

The reason his audience hissed was a very good one ; 
they were inclined to endorse his sentiments, but, while 
doing so, by some hocus pocus, were turned into snakes, 
and were obliged to hiss him nolens volens. This is a 
comic incident that would make an excellent scene in 
a pantomime. 

Our bard, now, in order to give another dig at the 
sex makes poor Adam instead of bearing up like a 
man, when the time came for him to move, ungallantly 
vituperate Eve ; among other things, he calls her a 
"woman," a "snake," and a "crooked rib," and our 
bard absurdly grumbles that the Deity did not 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 119 

" Fill the world at once 
With men as angels, without feminine, 
Or find some other way to generate 
Mankind !" 

He also remarks that her serpentine form and snake- 
like ways will show to future ages her inward fraud, to 
warn all creatures from her. 

This is awful language ! What wonder that our bard's 
female relatives all quarrelled with him, and forsook his 
house for other quarters. 

Eve, however, had recourse to the usual snaky oper- 
ation of tears, and after a moderate amount of wheed- 
ling, poor Adam had the bit put in his mouth and be- 
came as submissive a tool in female hands as he and his 
descendants were and shall be, evermore! 

After a long colloquy with the archangel Michael, 
who superintended the ejectment proceedings and who 
recommends them to take a more cheerful view of 
things, the pair, without giving further trouble, de- 
parted, under view of a troop of cherubim who had 
come to see what was going on, just as the neighbors 
throw up the windows and the boys gather in the trees 
when a funeral is in operation. 

Our poet concludes with a burst of practical philoso- 
phy that, " although some natural tears they dropped," 
they soon got over that, and as they concluded the 
world was all before them, were soon on the qui vive, 
for a comfortable location. 

When Candide is at the house of Senator Pococur- 
ante, at Venice, perceiving a " Milton," he asked the 



120 PELICAN PAPERS. 

Senator, who was of the nil admirari order, if he did 
not regard that author as a great man. " What !" said 
Pococurante, " that barbarian who makes a long com- 
mentary of the first chapter of Genesis, in ten books of 
grating lines ; that coarse imitator of the Greeks, who 
caricatures the creation, and who, while Moses repre- 
sents the Eternal being as creating the world by word 
of mouth, causes the Messiah to take out a large com- 
pass from a closet in the Heavens, in order to plan out 
the work ! I esteem the man who has botched the 
Hell and the Satan of Tasso, who disguises the Devil 
sometimes as a frog, sometimes as a dwarf, and makes 
him dispute on theology? * .* * * * 

Neither myself nor anybody in Italy can swallow such 
ridiculous extravaganzas. The marriage of Sin and 
Death and the Adders of which Sin is delivered are 
enough to turn the stomach of any man of delicate 
taste ; and his long description of a hospital would only 
suit a ditch scraper. Why, sir, that muddy, absurd and 
disgusting poem was despised at its birth. I treat it 
to-day as it was treated in its own country by its co- 
temporaries." " Oh, what a great man !" said Candide 
to himself, " what a great genius is this Pococurante, — 
nothing can please him !" 



I heard a loud spoken man, of an independent turn 
of thought, speaking at my literary club, lately, of the 
great German image Goethe, and the boldness of this 
man's speech about this great Image, I must confess, 
astounded me ; I shuddered at the sacrilegious attack. 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 121 

The auditors looked aghast and were too much as- 
tonished to reply. 

This Iconoclast spoke somewhat in this wise : 

" This man, Goethe, forsooth, must be put on a pin- 
nacle, for all time, because, at different periods of his 
life, composing driblets of his play called Faust, he, at 
last, after more than thirty years hard brain-pummel- 
ling, put it together and issued it as an original produc- 
tion." 

" Any man could write a first-class play if you give 
him thirty years to do it in ; especially could he do it, 
if the same subject had been handled by upwards of 
thirty different writers before him, whose merits he 
could imitate and faults avoid." 

" The characters of Faust, Wagner, the Black Dog, 
and Mephistophiles, the revels of the Walpurgis night 
on the Blocksberg, the witches, and the imps, the cats 
and the devils, were all stale affairs found in the old 
legends and puppet plays, and presented by prior writ- 
ers in many shapes." 

" ' The puppet plays echoed and vibrated in many 
tones through my mind,' says Goethe himself. Cal- 
deron de le Barca, the Spaniard, in his ' Magico Prodigi- 
oso,' and Marlowe, in his ' Tragical Life and Death 
of Dr. Faustus? were both quasi originators of the 
Faustus." 

" Those compositions also were poetic jumbles of the 
celestial, diabolical, philosophical, magical, mystical and 
fantastical order ; and had even in them a feminine de- 
sideratum as a moving game of the action — the proto- 
type of Margaret in the German play." 



122 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" Heyne wrote of the production." ' There are fine 
passages in it, but with them, there are such things as 
only he could give to the world who takes all other men 
to be blockheads !' And yet to admire it became the 
fashion. Its very absurdities, extravaganzant insults to 
common sense and impudent innovations made it 
sought after. ' This work,' wrote a Goethe enthusi- 
ast, ' raised Goethe to the highest pinnacle of fame, 
and he was universally acknowledged to be the first 
poet of his age.' " 

" Ever since the play was written, although the plot 
and characters were palpable enough, people have been 
groping for some hidden meaning, especially in the gib- 
berish parts." 

" One groper says, ' It appeals to all minds with the 
irresistible fascination of an eternal problem.' " 

" Goethe never thought much of himself, and if he 
had not been so beslobbered with laudation, as he was, 
by Charles Augustus and the rest of the Lilliputian 
court at Weimar, he might never have found out that 
he was a great man." 

" ' People come and ask me what idea I have embod- 
ied in Faust,' says he, ' as if I knew myself and could 
express it, — ' from heaven across the world to hell ! ' that 
might answer if need were.' At another time he said 
of it ' it is fantastic stuff, and transcends all ordinary 
sentiment ; ' at another, ' they have now been torment- 
ing themselves for nearly thirty years with the broom- 
sticks of the Blocksberg and the cat dialogue of the 
witches kitchen, but they have never yet rightly sue- 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 1 23 

ceeded in interpreting and allegorizing that dramatic 
humoristic nonsense.' " 

" Why, to the ordinary common sense observer there 
is no ambiguity or mystery in the matter." 

" A worn out student, tired of study, wants to ' see 
life,' and gets the Devil to assist him, for the price of 
his soul. Part of the fun is the cozening of a poor Ger- 
man girl ! There are a few imps, witches, broomsticks, 
cats and demons thrown in as a garnish to the dish." 

" This is all there is, substantially, of this literary 
olla podrida" 

" Anybody but a brain-twisted, metaphysical, nebu- 
lous, mystery-loving German could get the above plot 
in his head and understand it." 

" But no, — Mynheer must needs cudgel his brains to 
find some metaphysical, psycological, biological enigma 
in it. Unless a thing is supposed to have a puzzle or a 
paradox in it your German finds it fade." 

" He must eat his cabbage rotten or not at all." 

"He wants the metaphysical stingo, even in his liter- 
ary sauer-krout" 

" Who now a book of moderate sense will read, 
Such works are held as antiquate and hoary, 
And as regards the younger folk, indeed, 
They never yet have been so pert and saucy." 

" So writes the author, in the mouth of one of his 
personages, and this, probably, is the key note of the 
jargon and gibberish used in parts of the play." 



124 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" If it had been made less fantastic and more lucid, 
the saucy youth would not have thought it so wonder- 
ful." 

" Common sense had become ' antiquate and hoary.' " 

" The conversation between the Supreme being and 
the Devil," continued the loud-speaking man, " is a nice 
piece of literary impudence. The scene is a mere 
plagiarism from the first part of the book of Job, where- 
in the Almighty authorizes the Devil to tempt Job. 
The Devil is made to offer to bet the Lord, that he, the 
L., cannot prevent Faust from getting into his, the D.'s 
clutches." 

" The bet having been ' taken/ the Devil's soliloquy 
after the colloquy, is a particularly decorous and rever- 
ential piece of writing." 

' I like, at times, to hear the Ancient's word, 
And have a care to be most civil, 
It 's really kind of such a noble Lord, 
So humanly to gossip with the Devil.' 

" And this kind of fantastic drivel has put this pro- 
duction at the head of German, philosophic, poetic and 
dramatic literature. Its precedence and fame accuse 
that literature of poverty — mats, ' Dans le royaume des 
aveugles les borgnes sont les roisi " 

"I say," continued the loud-speaking man, "that if 
this writer's eminence is claimed for him as the original 
composer of the dramatic farrago called Faust, his claim 
is not a well based one." At. this he looked around 
savagely, but all were too much astonished to say a word. 



FIRING AT SOME OLD IMAGES. 125 

" The composition, whatever its merits, is nothing 
but a rehash of what thirty minds had prepared before 
him, with some additional fantastic trimmings put in 
to stimulate the thick German palate." After this re- 
mark, the Iconoclast put on his hat, and abruptly- 
left the room, with a determined air. Another Icono- 
clast, encouraged by the apparent easy victory of the 
first, then began the following diatribe : 

" There are two Italian writers that, it seems to me, 
have been made images of long enough. Why that 
mass of chimerical absurdity, called ' Orlando Furioso' 
should have entitled Ariosto to be dubbed ' 77 Divino] 
and placed his crowned bust and effigy in concert saloons 
and on theatre curtains is a mystery to me." 

" It is a tissue of ' Mother Goose ' and ' Jack, the Gi- 
ant Killer' nonsense, and no modern writer of similar 
stuff could get a publisher to listen to him." 

" Why, even in the author's own time, Cardinal 
d'Este, his patron, treated the poem with contempt, and 
turned the poet, very properly, out of his house. 
\ Where the devil did you get all that trash from, Mes- 
ser Ludovico ?' exclaimed the old Cardinal, after perus- 
ing a volume of it, and returning it to the poet, who 
had his mouth and ears gaping to receive laudation." 

" There is another pretender rated as an Italian 
classic, called Bocaccio. The apotheosis of this filthy, 
shallow fellow by the Italian people fills me with won- 
der, and gives me a contempt for their literary and 
moral judgment. In fact, their literature, in general, is 
flimsy stuff." 

" Most of this fellow's low stories that have made a 



126 PELICAN PAPERS. 

classic of him, were stolen from Apuleius and other old 
"writers ; others would not be admitted to-day in a low 
newspaper/' 

" As to reflective or reasoning power, originality of 
ideas or poetic imagination, he has no more than a 
dried fish. He is a prominent blackguard and nothing 
more." 

" For myself," said this Iconoclast, " I am getting 
tired of hearing about many of these old images. Li- 
braries are full of such antiquated imposters." 

" They have acquired a sort of status, by long suffer- 
ance and general acquiescence. It is time they were 
exploded." 

" There are more brains in one standard ' Review ' of 
the present day, than in the accumulated works of a 
dozen of these overrated fossils." 

On enquiry as to the character and conditions of 
these two Iconoclasts after they had left the room, I 
found that one was the writer of several unsuccessful 
plays, and the other was an occasional writer for the Re- 
views and Magazines. 



BLOWING YOUR OWN TRUMPET. 



Before Gunpowder and Printing became kings, rank 
and position were achieved through daring and physical 
prowess — sometimes through the accumulation of gold 
and its workings. 

The achievement of greatness, however, through the 
process of blowiiig one s own trumpet seems to have been 
in ancient or mediaeval times unknown — printing was 
required for its full development. 

This musical accomplishment is not a difficult one. 
Success in it has three factors. 

First. — Some knowledge of the art of blowing. 

Second. — An unshakeable degree of assurance. 

Third. — Persons gullible enough to listen to the mu- 
sic. 

Successful blowing requires some knowledge of hu- 
manity, and but little intellectual development or moral 
courage. 

The trumpeter generally blows behind a screen, 

Some people are too modest to blow, and shrink 
from the sound. 

Some people have a whimsical sentiment, called self- 
respect, and it prevents them from blowing. Some 
people are so proud that they will not condescend to 
blow their own trumpets, but expect other people to 
do so for them. 



128 PELICAN PAPERS. 

All such people, at the present day, whatever their 
merits, may be considered practically, as failures. 

Modesty is a praiseworthy flower ; all who see it 
might appreciate, but few who would appreciate see it. 
That which makes its beauty makes its concealment. 
Like a night plant it shrinks under the garish day. 

Merit that is modest, amid the shoving and jostling 
of the throng, is left behind or trampled under foot. 
Sometimes it is perceived, drawn out and placed in the 
front — but rarely ; generally, even genius will perish 
from neglect unless it assert itself and cry aloud ; and 
he who merely cries aloud will often usurp the place 
that really belongs to genius. 

A Frenchman has said that, in every profession, that 
which is the least worthy to appear, is always that 
which presents itself with the most impudence. 

Doubtless, mere pretention to a quality will often 
give credit for its possession. The most successful 
trumpet blowers, however, are those who appear not to 
be blowing. 

They will perform under some guise that conceals 
their real action. Sometimes they profess to be phil- 
anthropists, and are notoriously active in humane pur- 
poses. 

Sometimes they assume the garb of reform, and clamor 
at abuses that they may use them as stepping stones ; 
they will join in a popular hue and cry, to catch a thief, 
but make no dangerous or troublesome efforts to hold 
or punish him. Any personal sacrifice is not in their 
decalogue. They do not care to better the world, but 
to use it. 



BLOWING YOUR OWN TRUMPET. 1 29 

The religious field is also a fine one ; it is one in 
which the trumpet blowers can play their airs with least 
interruption and with most effect, and enables them to 
extend far and wide their influence. 

As a patriot, also, the trumpet blower is quite suc- 
cessful. His blasts in this guise are of a fine heroic 
order ; they are heard amid the largest audiences, and his 
variations on the great themes of Liberty, Country and 
Human rights are far resounding. 

This may be paraphrased in verse : 

As patriot now, he smirks, and bows and bribes, 
And to all principles, in turn, subscribes ; 
Of people's rights and wrongs he sternly bawls, 
"Awake! Awake!" the downtrod masses calls; 
Denounces those in power as arrant thieves — 
Calls for reform, and for his country grieves — 
While he, the nimblest trimmer of the day, 
Wants but the chance to be still worse than they. 
So, want of power oft makes those wondrous good 
Who'd reign like very Neros, if they could ; 
Who virtues claim, when placed in humble stations, 
But shake them off, when great — like poor relations. 

There is a quality the self-trumpeter must above all 
discard, in order to be successful, that is sincerity ; the 
possession of this faculty would be a serious drawback 
to him. In order that his music may be effective, he 
will have to conceal his own character and motives, bow 
to pride, flatter the vain, and truckle to humanity gen- 



130 PELICAN PAPERS. 

erally. He will have to assume to be what he is not, 
and deny to others what they are entitled to. 

In other words, to be a really great self-trumpeter, 
he will have to be a hypocrite and a detractor. As his 
moral sensibility is small, however, this will not hinder 
him ; besides, the blasts of his own trumpet will be so 
loud that they will generally drown to his own ear the 
sounds made by others. 

There is one curious phase of self-trumpeting occa- 
sionally adopted as being the least troublesome, and 
which is sometimes quite as effective as the blatant 
style ; it may be termed still-blowing. This kind of 
trumpeter assumes an imposing and pretentious atti- 
tude, puts on looks of deep meaning, carries himself 
with an air of lofty superiority, but utters no sound. 
However, his look, manner, and air are so imposing, and 
his superiority apparently so conceded and so boldly 
arrogated, that the observer is led to suppose that the 
superiority must exist and the merit be great ; and, in 
fact, that the very high degree of merit possessed, makes 
the possessor disdainful of any effort to render manifest 
what all must be aware of. Does not every person re- 
call great silent magnates, censors, and arbiters, whose 
imposing silence based on ignorance, was all that made 
them great? 

" There are a sort of men, whose visages 
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond ; 
And do a willful stillness entertain, 
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion 



BLOWING YOUR OWN TRUMPET. I3I 

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit. 
O! my Antonio, I do know of these 
That therefore only are reputed wise, 
For saying nothing." 

One of the most successful trumpeters of the active 
description that has fallen under my observation was a 
citizen of Mongrelia, named Hazy, Salmon J. Hazy. 
Hazy was a self importation from a New England vil- 
lage. His parents were poor but acute, and constantly 
impressed that latter quality upon little Salmon. Sal- 
mon drank it all in, and it grew with him. After Sal- 
mon had graduated from teaching the district school, 
and from putting up imitation groceries at the country 
store, and had comfortably located his parents in the 
country poor-house, he thought that he would seek his 
fortune in one of the large cities. He did so, and se- 
lected Mongrelia. 

After divers obscure situations, Salmon, in time, ob- 
tained one in a mercantile house of large dealing. His 
position was a very subordinate, almost a menial one, 
but he thought it now his time and opportunity to play 
on the trumpet, for which he had a natural instinct. 

He, accordingly, began his music on the head clerk, 
and by ingenious contrivances caused divers small anec- 
dotes of his, Salmon's, industry and business qualifica- 
tions to be brought to the clerk's ears. 

These things, aided by timely flattery and obsequi- 
ousness, brought their fruits, and Salmon received 
speedy promotion. He now tried a higher tone. The 
head of the firm was a vestryman of a prominent church, 



132 PELICAN PAPERS. 

and his daughter there taught Sunday-school. She 
was a person of strong religious proclivities, more par- 
ticularly as she was plain in appearance and slightly de- 
formed. She was, severely animadvertory on the young 
men of the day, who neglected her, and whom she there- 
fore characterized, generally, as scapegraces and vaga- 
bonds. Salmon found that she was possessed of a small 
patrimony besides having pleasing pecuniary prospects. 
He accordingly adjusted his trumpet to a religious 
" stop " and began a psalm. 

He applied to the clergyman for labor in the " cause," 
imparted to him his earnest spiritual convictions, and 
ascribed them as results of the Reverend man's admira- 
ble sermons to young men. 

The clergyman lauded his zeal, exhibited him to his 
friends and gave him a class for religious instruction. 

It will be observed that Salmon ingeniously caused 
the clergyman to blow his, Salmon's trumpet for him. 
With such endorsement Salmon had no great difficulty 
in establishing a sympathetic acquaintance with Miss 
van Scraps, at the Sunday-school, and by dint of blow- 
ing several airs illustrative of his abnegation of worldly 
pleasures and his taste for superlunary matters, with 
some pretty variations suggestive of the goodness, intel- 
lectual and personal charms of Miss van Scraps, he soon 
came to a secret sentimental understanding with that 
young person, which, although opposed by stern pa- 
rents, soon got to such a head that Salmon J. Hazy, in 
due time, became possessed of his well-to-do Dulcinea, 
and wrote himself junior partner in the house of 
van Scraps, Shuttle & Co. 



BLOWING YOUR OWN TRUMPET. 1 33 

After considerable additions to his savings, Mr. Hazy 
cut loose from the dry good business and established 
himself as a financier, and the house of Hazy & Co. be- 
came a prominent one in business circles. 

Hazy wined and dined prominent monied men and 
statesmen and noblemen on their travels, also local poli- 
ticians and railroad magnates and railroad wreckers, and 
loose journalists and peripatetic speculators, and ex- 
panded to them upon the possessions, influence and 
financial eminence of Hazy & Co., all of which he caused 
to be duly chronicled by the public press. He also 
purchased shares in a leading newspaper in order that 
his trumpeting might have a sure vehicle to the ear of 
the community. 

He attended all public banquets and anniversaries, 
and became an active member of literary, scientific and 
antiquarian societies, so as to keep himself fully before 
the public, and the house of Hazy & Co. properly ad- 
vertised. The house became the standing treasurer of 
all the prominent charitable and religious associations 
it could lay hands on ; by dint of advertising, subscrib- 
ing, puffing, wriggling, and general trumpeting the house 
of Hazy & Co. became the bankers of the general gov- 
ernment and received the confidence of the commu- 
nity. 

One very great and successful principle guided them 
in the conduct of their business. They never refused 
to take in money, when offered them, no matter what 
their financial outlook or expectations of returning it. 

It is true, the house failed, several times, but three 
successive bankruptcy discharges whitewashed them 



134 PELICAN PAPERS. 

handsomely, and some fine blasts on the trumpet, re- 
stored the confidence of the victims. 

Hazy now became a politician and trumpeted loudly 
in political circles. He became a standing chairman at 
general reform meetings, but bided his time before he 
jumped on either partisan side of the fence. 

Finally, getting sure indications of the voting result 
in a controlling State, he took sides with the party 
likely to win, and sent a check for $10,000 to a newspa- 
per with a statement that it was for the service of the 
party to which he now gave his decided adhesion, with 
a rehearsal of his principles and divers patriotic trump- 
etings on the high duties and noble mission of the citi- 
zen of the day. 

The magnificent donation and the accompanying 
music were duly noticed in his party journals. Hazy 
became a great political light, but, the check tvas never 
paid. He, now, also thought it well to be looked up to 
as a great leader and thinker in church matters. It is 
true, his various failures in business, at times, swallowed 
up church or charitable funds under his charge, but, his 
high reputation for respectability and church orthodoxy 
carried him through, and he managed always to place 
the blame on other shoulders. 

Hazy was an ardent believer in the French maxim, 
" Beaucoup de bruit beaucoup de fruit." He believed 
that lies were sufficient to breed opinion and that opin- 
ion brings substance. In due time, therefore, by the 
successful pursuit of his peculiar accomplishment he be- 
came a leading citizen, a trusted financier, and a suc- 
cessful placeman. 



BLOWING YOUR OWN TRUMPET. I35 

He married his daughters, handsomely, on the 
strength of the large fortunes they were to have. The 
sons-in-law are still looking for the fortunes — expecting 
them when the estate is settled. 

Trumpet-blowing was kept up by Hazy after his de- 
mise. His will, after munificent provisions for his fam- 
ily, donated many legacies to distinguished people and 
influential acquaintances, and to a great number of 
charitable institutions. There were also heavy devises 
for the foundation of a church, a public library, and a 
lunatic asylum. Also, for a huge mausoleum subse- 
quently erected with a laudatory epitaph of the de- 
ceased's many acquirements and virtues. Curiously 
enough, on. the face of the obelisk, the sculptor placed 
two long trumpets saltier pointing to the skies. The 
money realized by the executors was not enough to pay 
the debts, so they had to pay for the obelisk out of 
their own pockets, as they had ordered it before they 
grasped the situation. 

Hazy may be still trumpeting around among the 
elect, in the transition state, awaiting preferment, and 
explaining to them that he, Hazy, is entitled to a supe- 
rior position among the Cherubim. 

He, at any rate, was a very successful man on earth. 
Possibly St. Peter may find him out. 



ON PRETENTIOUS NOMENCLATURE. 



Of course, names are a necessity. People cannot be 
designated numerically. There must be also, as civil- 
ization advances, population increases and intercourse 
progresses, something more than local, personal or fam- 
ily attributes to distinguish individuals. 

As those of the same soubriquet increase in a locality, 
there is required individual designation, and the soubri- 
quet is converted into a nomen and a prenomen added. 

The inconvenience of a continuous series of mere no- 
mens is illustrated in the " ap " or "son of " of the 
Welchman. Evan ap Jenkins, ap Hugh, ap Morgan, 
ap David, ap Owen, ap Jones, is an inconveniently over- 
named individual, with nothing much to distinguish 
him ; for, in the locality where he lives almost every 
man he meets is either an Evans, a Jenkins, a Morgan, 
a Davidson or a Jones, who rings the changes, himself, 
on those names, mutatis mutandis. 

This, however, is pure simplicity. It is of Arcadian 
descent, and partakes not of the pretention hereinafter 
referred to. 

The names we find among the modern civilized Indi- 
ans afford a sorry illustration of their decadence from 
the glory, vigor, and independence of their race, as in- 
dicated by their names when warriors and wanderers of 
the forest. John Greenblanket, Jack Halfoot, Peter 



ON PRETENTIOUS NOMENCLATURE. 1 37 

Silvernail, are in strong contrast with " Yah, yah-Tus- 
tanga — The Great Sun ;" 

" Arra-ha-wi-ka-ma-ga — The man that can die ;" and 

" Mian-non-to-no-so-mah — The wolf that howls." 

These names may come under the head of preten- 
tious nomenclature ; but the Indian was supposed to 
live up to his name ; it had an object as well as a mean- 
ing. 

The English, above all people, are the slaves of small 
conventionalism. They are its social puppets, and al- 
though losing individuality and independence by it, 
they bow to the yoke, and are so conceited in their ser- 
vitude that they consider as inferior those that are not 
in the same condition. 

Subserviency to rank for many centuries has created 
this condition, under a permanent aristocracy who 
make themselves samplars and standards to those be- 
neath. These latter, in turn, become dictators to those 
lower in the scale. All rules of social conduct are sup- 
posed to have a fiat from a superior condition, and 
there is a general rolling of the eyes upward, by all the 
links of the chain except the highest, who, generally, as 
heads of the church and heads of society, look down on 
the rest as inferior beings. 

They are great social critics, those English, rather of 
the relation and modus of things than their substance ; 
and not of things, intrinsically, but as to their being 
pro or con their own prejudices or habits, which are dei- 
fied as standards. 

The conventionalism of the Englishman is particu- 
larly manifested in the matter of names. 



I38 PELICAN PAPERS. 

The American Anglo-Saxon, with a proper simplic- 
ity and modesty, which prohibit him from intruding 
himself or his belongings unnecessarily upon the atten- 
tion of others, instead of writing all his appellations 
when he designates himself gives his surname with 
merely the initial of the others. 

Even the great men of Rome — imperial rulers and 
illustrious authors, statesmen and warriors — refrained 
from setting forth their entire nomenclature. 

Did not Virgil dub himself merely P. Virgilius Maro ? 
and Horace, Q. Horatius Flaccus ? Publius Cornelius 
Scipio ^Emilianus Africanus, Minor, did not ostenta- 
tiously spread all that before the community, but sim- 
ply called himself P. Cornelius Scipio ^Emilianus, A.M. 
Even great Caesar did not bother the Romans with his 
first appellation, but was satisfied, although a world 
conqueror, with simple C. Julius Caesar. 

So the Anglo-Saxons of the Western Hemisphere do 
not impose their entire appellation upon mankind. 

They naturally suppose, so long as their designation 
is sufficiently made out, by the use of their nomen and 
an initial prefix, that it makes no difference to the 
world what their other names are, and that it is unnec- 
essary, indecorous and absurd to intrude them on the 
community. 

George Passmaquoddy Jones is sufficiently and prop- 
erly promulgated as G. P. Jones. Such abbreviation is 
in harmony with the utilitarian principle that governs 
this practical and serious age. Besides being, in an 
aesthetic aspect, more simple, modest, and Dorically 
elegant. 



ON PRETENTIOUS NOMENCLATURE. 1 39 

Is there any doubt that if G. P. J. were to inflict his 
" Passmaquoddy " on his friends but that they would 
resent it as an arrogant intrusion ? 

So my friend Fungus, was contented, for half a cen- 
tury, with the initials E. T. as a prefix. Since their re- 
turn from Europe, however, his wife, who went through 
two weeks of a London season, insists upon the ex- 
panded designation of " Mr. and Mrs. Eliphalet Titcomb 
Fungus " being placed upon her cards. 

So another acquaintance, who was barbarously chris- 
tened Appolos Polycarp Raddle, shrinks modestly into 
A. P. Raddle, and his brother O. S. no one would sus- 
pect of having the Arcadian prefixes of " Orange Sil- 
vanus " to his name ; and yet, this modesty, this manli- 
ness in the above regard, is absolutely made the sub- 
ject of criticism and ridicule by our pretentious cousins 
on the other side of the water. 

Those slaves of a miserable conventionalism deride 
our short, crisp initial letters, and laugh at them as ab- 
surd national characteristics. 

They do not, forsooth, like Zadok V. Peabody, or In- 
crease P. Pepper, or P. Andronicus Nash, or Uriah B. 
Grubb, or Enoch T. Dusenbury, or Ebenezer L. Buffum, 
or Ossian P. Flipper or Jerome B. Coffin ! What would 
these minions of conventionalism have ? Would they 
restrict us to but one name, or would they have us con- 
verts to the pretentious conventionalism of indicting, at 
length, all one's appellations. 

Let us look at the practical effect of their side of the 
question — what do these critics themselves ? What do 
you think of a man designated for time and eternity by 



140 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the ridiculous name of " Gulch " writing his communi- 
cations over the signature of Augustus Harry Rufus 
Higgenbotham Gulch? Is there not pretention for you, 
and a useless taking up of your and my time in learfiing 
that the man's name is Augustus and Harry and Hig- 
genbotham, when his identity might be sufficiently and 
fully established by his calling himself publicly A. H. R. 
H. Gulch? Let him keep his " Harry" and his " Hig- 
genbotham " for his intimate friends, if he chooses, but 
he has no business to impose them upon you and 
me. 

There is another individual — a poet in the magazines 
— who must needs announce to the world that his crude 
hyperbolics, and whining vageries are the offspring of 
the genius of " Henry Talbot Plantaganet Dobson !" 
Will his " Talbot " and " Plantaganet " suffice to save 
his jingling platitudes from the fire kindler and the rag- 
picker ? 

When an English puff-ball comes to this country to 
barter his titled prospects for a fortune, think you, his 
card, with the nomenclature 

" Herbert Algernon Fitzboodle Scragsby, 

Royal Bugaboos, Scragsby Hall," 

upon it, will prevent him from being deemed what, in 
his own language, is expressed asa" cad "? 

And yet this fellow will travel on his nomenclature, 
with nothing to back it, and rely upon it as sufficient 
to pull him through life. 



ON PRETENTIOUS NOMENCLATURE. 141 

It will not do outside of England, my noble Briton. 
There may be a potency in mere names. Jingling syl- 
lables may tickle the title worshippers and tuft hunters ; 
here, however, you must take the man. His name is 
an appendage to him, not he to the name ; and he gives 
you no more of it than is necessary for his designation. 
If you sneer at him, therefore, it is for being unpreten- 
tious. 

The name mania never reaches such a stage of sub- 
lime absurdity as when the Briton of high or medium 
degree has an announcement of his marriage inserted in 
the public journals. Every minute detail of nomencla- 
ture is placarded, as if the public were athirst for it, and 
it were a matter of important information which the 
community was entitled to demand as a public right. 

So desirous is the conventionalized Briton, under the 
circumstances, that his surroundings, connections and 
belongings may be sufficiently promulgated that history, 
geography, topology as well as genealogy, are lugged 
in, to amplify and decorate the flaring announcement 
of what should be treated quietly, as a private matter, 
but, which, in his aspirations to blow the bullfrog into 
the bull and ape the grandees that he dreads and ad- 
mires, he amplifies into an extended placard of self- 
glorification. Here is a sample of this thing not much 
overdone : 

" Married at Squirrel Court, near Shamcaster, Bum- 
bleton on Wye, Slopshire, on Saturday, the 4th inst., by 
the Hon. and Rev. Felix William John Thomas Au- 
gustus Poppleton-Smythers, A. M. C. R. S., uncle of 



142 PELICAN PAPERS. 

the bride, Rector of St. Bridget's-in-the Swamp, as- 
sisted by the Rev. Cwd. Llewellyn Jones ap Griffith, 
Pantglass Trimmer Biggers, Curate of Cricket-howl pri- 
ory, Pomper-nickle, Bangor ; Madeline Maude Con- 
stance Georgina de Vere Bobkins, seventh daughter 
of John Robert Algernon Clarendon Ramsbottom, 
Esq., Col. of the Lancanshire Hussars, yeoman cavalry, 
Justice of the Peace, K. O. P., to Augustus William 
Montague Quigsley Topladdle, Esq., of Her Majesty's 
17th Foot, Royal Coldcreams, and third son of St. John 
George Straddledykes Fitz Jobson Topladdle, Esq., of 
Bagersden, Catacre, and grandson of General Sir Hugh 
Patrick Hercules Seringapatam McGloory O'Hara 
O'Shaughnessy, K. C. B., of Whackdoodle Hall, Crooch- 
machreery, Ballashyndytoe, Sligo." 

It is with a deep inspiration that one finishes the pe- 
rusal of such announcements, and wonder withal, that 
the human ape should, in the face of the practical intel- 
ligence and common sense of an age daily suppressing 
tinsel, continue such antics. 

The Spanish grandees are decided votaries of preten- 
tious nomenclature. One of the daughters of an In- 
fanta of Spain rejoices in the multiform designation of 
Blanche de Castille, Marie de la Concepcion, Theresa, 
Francoise, d'Assise, Marguerite, Jeanne, Beatrice, Char- 
lotte, Louise, Fernande, Elvire, Ildefonse, Regina, Jo- 
sefa, Michelle, Gabrielle, Raphaelle. 

This polynominal phenomenon was born in 1868. It 
is questionable whether she has yet learned her own 
name, or ever will. 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 



To make an effort to keep up the appearance of 
" gentility," amid circumstances that tend to make it 
shabby, is the effort of a natural pride. 

It is a mild protest against the jade Fortune and her 
attendant myrmidons, who are assailing the victim 
with all sorts of humiliation. It is the retention of a 
smile amid bitterness, and the covering of distress with 
a garment, seemly although flimsy. It cannot fairly be 
termed hypocrisy. It is not an aiming to appear what 
one is not, but an effort to let outer circumstances, in- 
dicate, symbolically, the spirit that was, and the spirit 
that still remains, which asserts itself as well as it can, 
and puts its best foot foremost. 

The community should not deride " shabby-gentil- 
ity "; it strives to make that pleasing to the eye which 
otherwise would be depressing. Quiet Shabby-Gentil- 
ity is a prettier figure in the landscape than blatant 
Poverty howling at his fate, and shaking his fist at the 
world. 

" I am poor, miserable, hopeless," murmurs shabby 
gentility,/' but I will not trouble others with a know- 
ledge of it, if I can help it. I will at any rate smile, in 
public, although I sigh within. I have still a pride in 
my appearance, it is a tribute to the friends I may, pos- 
sibly, still claim, and it is a proper respect to myself." 



144 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" I am a beggar !" roars blatant Poverty, shaking his 
rags ; " look at me and my misery. Give me of your 
abundance orT will curse God and you." 

The pride of Shabby-Gentility is in strong contrast, 
also, with that which aims to create impression from 
display and pretentious self-assertion. 

The one is a modest lady, clad in thread-bare black, 
but neat and comely withal, deferential without humil- 
ity, and although discriminating in taste, having sym- 
pathy for those humbler and meaner. 

The other is a flaunting hussy, bedizened and artifi- 
cial, lording it over those not so fortunate, claiming 
consequence from fortune's gifts, and herding only with 
those who may be of personal advantage or of similar 
worldly condition, 

I had, and still have a friend, whom I will call Fer- 
rers. Ferrers, at the time' I write of, was about thirty- 
four years of age, of fine health and attractive presence. 
He had, although not a large fortune, one much more 
than sufficient for the needs of his single life and mod- 
erate tastes. He had been educated at a German uni- 
versity, and was a man of literary culture and active in- 
tellect. 

He had resided much in foreign countries, and when 
I renewed my old acquaintance with him he had been 
domiciled for only a year in his native city of Mon- 
grelia. 

He had frequented what is known as the "society" 
there, but, although receiving much attention, found it 
uncongenial. 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 145 

He consequently rather avoided the lighter phases of 
the city life, and sought companionship with a few 
friends that had tastes similar to his own. He was also 
giving his attention to special studies, and had regular 
hours of application. 

As I had an extensive library, he passed many of his 
evenings with me, in looking over my old books, or in 
social converse, and now and then a game of cards. 

Ferrers disliked everything that was pretentious and 
assuming, and had a distaste for conceited and dog- 
matic people. Vulgarity of manner and deportment 
were also in opposition to his quiet tastes and natural 
refinement. For the higher qualities I found him true, 
and punctiliously honorable, modest as to his own 
opinions and merits and considerate towards those of 
others. 

With such a character and with such tastes I was 
surprised to hear one day, that Ferrers had become en- 
gaged in marriage to one Miss Aurora Slingsby, one of 
the very gay and dashing young women of Mongrelia. 

She was of a family of wealth newly acquired, through 
the " speculative" instincts of her father, who was now 
a purse-proud agitator of the financial market, seldom 
seen in his house, over which presided mother and 
daughter, who gave full swing to their love of display 
and desire to be prominent in the festive world around 
them. 

Their entertainments were numerous, and their house 
was the centre of the gay life of Mongrelia. 

Ferrers had traveled with the family in Europe, and 
on his return many courtesies were extended to him by 



146 PELICAN PAPERS. 

them. The gossip was that they saw him in a good 
parti for Miss Aurora. He met with the family subse- 
quently at a watering place, and at the close of the 
summer, to the surprise of his acquaintances, was an- 
nounced as plighted in marriage to Miss Slingsby. 

In the Winter, during the engagement period, I still 
received visits occasionally from Ferrers. His mar- 
riage was to take place in the Spring, but I did not no- 
tice in him the brightness or enthusiasm of one who felt 
that he was about to take a step that would assure his 
future happiness. I noticed that he was often absent 
minded, and would poke my wood fire in sombre si- 
lence for half an hour at a time ; he also was in the 
habit of discussing human happiness and its conditions 
in an abstract light, as if he wanted to gain an insight 
into the general depths of such things, in order to 
measure his own condition. He seemed to desire to 
ascertain whether his then emotional state was a usual 
one, under the circumstances, or whether, under the 
circumstances, he should feel differently. 

I saw, at any rate, that he was not satisfied with 
himself, and, that, when he moralized on the world or 
mankind, he was mentally poising his own affair. It 
seemed that either his judgment accused his sensibilities 
of torpor, or that his sensibilities accused his judgment 
of want of appreciation. 

He would put to me abstract questions as to the ori- 
gin and growth and continuity of the feelings and their 
relation to reason. 

" Pelican," would he say, " Do you think the sensibili- 
ties, as a usual thing, if in opposition to the judgment, 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 147 

succumb to it in time, and that the force of judgment 
continually acting on a given subject would arrive at a 
true appreciation of it, apart from prior influences en- 
gendered through the emotions ? — in other words, can 
there ever be a continuous preferential action of the 
emotions for a thing, if the reasoning and moral facul- 
ties condemn it ? — or do you think that the sensibili- 
ties grow, and carry everything before them, and are 
they the safer guides?" 

Not knowing exactly what to say to such abstrac- 
tions, I would answer in some rambling or perhaps joc- 
ular way : but no answer that I would give would sat- 
isfy him, as I could discern, from the peckish manner 
in which he would poke the fire, and fling bits of wood 
at my terrier dog, Sniffles, who would yawn, in embar- 
rassed perturbation, and change his locality under the 
various missiles, which apparently indicated to his mind 
a desire that he should do so. 

I concluded that I ought to say something on the 
subject of his engagement that might be agreeable to 
him. In the course of conversation, therefore, alluding 
to the appearance of Miss Slingsby, I remarked that she 
was considered one of the most attractive looking young 
women in Mongrelia. He turned the conversation 
from the lady to the sentiment, that " the best part of 
beauty is what a picture cannot express." 

" Well," said I, " I suppose your discrimination has 
found that excellence to exist in the case in hand, and 
you have doubtless a full appreciation of it." 

"Yes, I suppose so," he answered, with something 
between a yawn and a sigh. 



I48 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" Pelican," said he, one evening, when he was at a 
quiet dinner with me, " we ought to lead two lives — in 
the latter one, to know how to avoid the mistakes of 
the former." 

These and similar remarks made me conclude that he 
was not at ease with his condition. I felt that he was 
anxious to unburden himself, and anatomize his emo- 
tional status, so I concluded I would practically open 
the subject. I confess, also, to having considerable 
curiosity in the matter. 

"How came it," said I, "that you became engaged 
to Miss Slingsby ? I did not think that you were inclined 
to settle yourself so readily, particularly as I hear the 
lady has very gay tastes not in harmony with your 
quiet and literary ones." 

" Well, Pelican, it is rather a delicate subject, and I 
cannot give you a very satisfactory answer. Although 
I am of a sympathetic temperament, I have never been 
much in female society, or had great intimacies with 
women. I never understood females very well. I met 
the lady at the Babbleton Springs. We were thrown 
much together. She was chatty, amusing, and appa- 
rently had a cheerful, affectionate disposition, and, I 
must confess, at the time, I found her attractive and 
entertaining. I did not give much study to her char- 
acter or mental qualities. She seemed to like my soci- 
ety, discriminated me above others, and, I suppose, the 
best of us is susceptible to flattery. There is no doubt, 
too, that liking or its showing begets liking; subse- 
quently, we passed a fortnight together, at a friend's 
house. There were boats, drives, woods, walks, poetry, 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 149 

and the rest of the small sympathetic machinery ; but, 
above all, were those two intensely dangerous factors — 
isolation and propinquity. Her merits, too, were being 
continually ding-donged into my ears by our hostess. 
I awoke one morning — thought over a certain egaye* 
conversation of the night before — wondered whether I 
had dreamed it, or whether it was a reality — and con- 
cluded I had said something quite compromising. A 
hand given to kiss in the morning, a rosebud put in my 
coat with a conscious smile, a radiant glance, and the 
words " dearest Frank " uttered in soft tremolo, clinched 
the idea. I accepted the situation, acted as was ex- 
pected, and — voilapour la vie! The next day, 'Mamma' 
was sent for from the city, and saluted me as her ' dear 
son.' Those words froze me like an icicle." 

" Que voulez vous ? I suppose there is a destiny in 
these things." Saying which words Ferrers approached 
my buffet, poured out a glass of Cognac and gulped it, 
although I had never before seen him drink spirits. 

" I didn't think," he resumed, " that, in Mongrelia, 
girls snapped one up in that fashion. You know, most 
of my manhood has been passed abroad, and I knew 
little about their manners or habits here. I supposed, 
from what I had heard, that they expected a good deal 
of attention and even a little rallying flirtatious talk, es- 
pecially if you were shut up with them in a country 
house, in summer : particularly, too, if the girl were of 
the bold, dashing, vivacious order and appeared to 
know the world and its ways, like an experienced 
veteran, as most of them do." 

" I suppose, however, our tastes will flow together ; 



I50 PELICAN PAPERS. 

humanity has great powers of adaptation. There 
will doubtless, be some, reason and good sense in 
this life combination, as in other partnerships — 
there would be mutual concession, doubtless — tastes, 
under association, amalgamate, they say ; if not, she 
will either take my tastes or I hers — probably, the latter ; 
and, I will have to become a follower of what is called 
gay society, and be dragged about like a tamed animal 
among the nonentities. Farewell to study and litera- 
ture and independence ! I will have, also, to bid fare- 
well to such sensible old mortals as you, my boy." 

"Forbid it — Heaven!" I remarked, not knowing 
exactly what next to say, and puzzled what advice to 
give in such a matter — especially when the inclinations 
and the situation appeared so strangely discordant. 

A ring at the front door, here interrupted our col- 
loquy. I then remembered that I had invited, as was 
occasionally my wont, my neighbor Somers and his 
daughter to take a dish of tea, and play three-handed 
whist with me. 

" Don't go, Ferrers," I said, " that ring announces my 
neighbor Somers and his daughter— you are in a philo- 
sophic mood, they are fine types of the ' shabby gen- 
teel,' and will repay study. Stay and take a hand at 
whist. He is a gentlemanly old fellow, and she a fine 
sensible girl ; you would like her. Stay and take a hand, 
and leave Miss Aurora to her ball. Pour quoi pas ? " 

Ferrers shook his head and rose to go : before he 
could do so, however, my man opened the door and 
announced Mr. and Miss Somers, in the sitting room. 

Ferrers could not leave the library without passing 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 151 

through the sitting-room. He could not, for the 
moment, find his hat ; at last it was found — a soft felt 
one — on the floor with Sniffles in it, curled up in a ker- 
chief and snoring profoundly. The incident caused a 
little laughing comment and delay, during which I in- 
troduced him to the father and daughter. 

" Come," said I " Ferrers — Sniffles is determined that 
you shall not leave — sit down and make a fourth with 
us, if only for a rubber." 

Ferrers yielded mechanically but urbanely. 

The candles were brought in — the curtains were 
drawn — the fire was refreshed — John, my old negro, 
put the kettle by the fire for punch — and Sniffles, after 
a sigh and a few winks at the fire, curled up on the rug 
again, for a nap. 

We cut for partners, and soon Ferrers and Miss Somers 
were seated opposite each other playing a first rate 
game against old Somers and me. 

I pause here, to remark upon the wonderful workings 
of the chain of circumstances. 

My text is Sniffles and the hat. 

Firstly, I remark, that there is no known process of 
investigation, discovery, or reasoning, experimental or 
logical — from cause to effect, or from effect to cause, by 
which it has or can be ascertained, under our present 
lights, whether everything, big and little, has been 
arranged for its own separate performance and sequence, 
or whether every event has its casualty and happening 
influenced by its association and catenation with others. 

In other words, has the Supreme designer arranged 
every action and event under fiats as old as time, or 



152 PELICAN PAPERS. 

does he leave them to the workings of the creature, 
each event modifying, influencing, and controlling the 
other, and making a great chain of events, each linked, 
belonging to, and growing out of some other. 

The latter view opens a wide range of thought — 
through it what happened to the Pterodactyllus or the 
Hy-laso-saurus, in his morning walk, may be a matter 
of indirect transmission to present occurrences ; it may 
be working now, through continuous modifications, in 
great affairs or small, such as the settling of an empire, 
the ordering of a meal, or the influencing of conduct 
that may regulate an everlasting doom. 

I walk the streets — my neighbor Nippers' little child 
put on slippery new shoes that morning — she falls ; I 
assist her, coming out of my house at the precise time 
of the falling— my hat flies off, out of it a white paper 
falls, which frightens a horse, the horse runs, collides 
with a vehicle — a man is thrown out and injures his 
skull — the doctor comes in a hurry, and in so doing, his 
carriage runs over a man ; the doctor is sued for dam- 
ages, a juror attending on the case, has to be down 
town an hour earlier than usual ; he generally walks ; 
owing to the cook he is late that morning and takes 
an air railroad ; there is a collision, the juror is wounded 
— his wife faints on receiving a telegram announcing 
the catastrophe, and falls, with a baby in her arms. The 
result is a little piece of human organization stops tick- 
ing ; a little soul flutters back to the animus mundi, and 
a possible future mayor of Mongrelia or the ruler of 
Brobdinagia hardly has a chance to open his eyes. 

Am I to understand that the great confederation of 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. I 53 

soul and body, its future destiny, as well as the possible 
destiny of cities and nations and the consequent physi- 
cal, moral, and eternal conditions of their inhabitants 
are made dependent upon such absurd occurrences as 
the slippery shoes of little Cordelia Nippers, and the 

like? 

Nay ; you will have to go far back of the shoes. The 
shoemaker was drunk that morning and forgot to scratch 
them — as he was told. Thence follow back what made 
him drunk — a scolding wife, the cold morning, low spir- 
its, and a thousand ramifications from those sources, 
each having its own chain, including the extra nicotine 
in his whiskey. 

Then you must take up the chain why little Nippers 
went out at that precise time — why her mother wanted 
a No. 6 spool of cotton at that precise moment that she 
did, which required little Nippers then to make her sortie ; 
why I had opened my door at that precise moment — 
why I should happen to have a sheet of white note 
paper in my hat — why that certain gust of wind then 
and there arose to blow my hat off — why the horse and 
the colliding vehicle passed at the precise time that they 
did — why the man that the doctor ran over passed just 
at the precise time and place to be run over — how the 
doctor's boy lost one eye, that caused him to run over 
the man — why the accident to the cars occurred — and 
why Mrs. Juror happened to be frightened in such a 
way and in such a condition — and how her nervous sys- 
tem became so sensitive. 

These matters involve, it will be observed, thousands 
of concatenating concatenations. You will find that 



154 PELICAN PAPERS. 

they will be connected with millions of events, big and 
little, far and near, that preceded them, including the 
Deluge and the Discovery of America. They will in- 
volve casualties and designs, moral motives and physi- 
cal motives, actions of the passions and of the nerves, 
maladies, reasonings, judgments, dispositions, forma- 
tions, developments, evolutions, and dissolutions. In a 
little while the brain will begin to reel and give it up. 

In this connection, if Sniffles had not got into that 
hat, Ferrers would not have been detained — and cer- 
tain consequences hereafter disclosed, including the 
great humanitarian sequences of birth, life, and death, 
and the future conditions of the objects of those event- 
ualities would not have followed. 

Supposing, per contra, that the above theory of for- 
tuitous consecution is not correct, but that all human 
action is the result of a direct supreme, predestined dis- 
posal of things, including not only temporal but ultra 
mundane conditions — why then, we had better cease 
from trouble and effort — bend our heads to blows of 
fate, become pessimists, and merely cry with the Islam- 
ite, "Allah ak bar I" — God is great. 

In this view of the matter, it made no difference, as 
to the sequences, whether Sniffles got into the hat or 
not ; they are not features of the narrative nor factors 
in the result, but mere figurants and accessories. 

" Quien. sabe f" says the Spaniard, and we humbly 
answer " Quien ?" Mahomet thought he had solved 
this problem, and tells us " Whatever good befalleth 
thee, O ! man, it is from God ; and whatever evil befall- 
eth thee it is from thyself." 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 155 

The point remains, what is good and what is evil? 
Everybody draws the differentiating line differently. 

Good and evil masquerade in each other's shapes. 

" Zadoc and the Hermit arrived, one evening, at a 
splendid castle, and asked for hospitality. Although 
the master of the castle kept aloof from them, they 
were sumptuously entertained, shown to magnificent 
apartments, and given a vessel of gold adorned with 
precious stones, to wash their hands in ; and, on leaving, 
were each presented with a gold piece." 

"'The master of this mansion,' said Zadig, as they 
journeyed together, ' appears to me a most generous, 
although a rather proud man ; he exercises a noble hos- 
pitality.' While uttering these words, he perceived that 
a kind of large pocket that the Hermit wore appeared 
extended and swollen. He discovered in it the golden 
vessel adorned with precious stones, which the Hermit 
had stolen. He did not venture to speak to him on 
the subject, but was in a state of strange surprise. " 

" Towards mid-day, the Hermit stopped at the door 
of a small house, belonging to a rich miser. He asked 
shelter there for a few hours." 

" An old servant received him, in a rough manner, 
and showed the Hermit and Zadig to a stable where 
they were given some stale olives, some bad bread, 
and sour beer. The Hermit ate and drank with as 
contented an air as he bore on the preceding evening; 
he then turned to the old servant, who was watching 
them to see that they stole nothing, and was hurrying 
them away, gave him the two pieces of gold which 
they had received that morning, and thanked him for 



156 PELICAN PAPERS. 

all his attentions. ' I pray you,' he said, ' introduce me 
to your master.' The astonished servant introduced 
the two travelers. ' My magnificent lord,' said the 
Hermit to him, ' I thank you, most humbly, for the 
noble manner in which you have received us. Be 
pleased to accept this vessel of gold as a testimonial of 
our gratitude.' " 

" The miser was ready to fall with astonishment. 
The Hermit gave him no time to recover from his sur- 
prise, but immediately departed with his youug com- 
panion." 

" ' My holy father,' said Zadig, ' what does all this 
mean ? You steal a golden bowl adorned with precious 
stones from a lord who entertains you magnificently, 
and you give it to one who treats you with indignity !' " 

" ' My son, replied the old man, ' that magnificent 
fellow, who only receives strangers from vanity and to 
cause his riches to be admired, will become a wiser man ; 
and the miser, on the other hand, will learn to exercise 
hospitality.' ' 

' They arrived, in the evening, at a handsomely built 
although plain mansion where nothing evidenced either 
prodigality or avarice. The proprietor was a philoso- 
pher, retired from the world, who cultivated in peace, 
wisdom, and virtue, and who, notwithstanding, was not 
wearied with such pursuits He had provided, in his 
house, a retreat for the reception of strangers, whom 
he received with a stately dignity that had nothing of 
ostentation in it He, himself, preceded the two trav- 
elers, whom he caused, at first, to take repose in a com- 
modious apartment. Some time after, he came, in per 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. I 57 

son, to invite them to a clean and well served table, 
during which he spoke with discretion of the last revo- 
lution at Babylon." 

" After other instructive and pleasant converse, the 
host reconducted the two travelers to their apartment, 
thanking Heaven for sending him as guests two such 
wise and virtuous men. He offered them money, in a 
noble and gracious manner, which could not give of- 
fence. The Hermit refused, and then took leave of 
him, as he intended to set out for Babylon before day- 
break." 

" Their parting was affectionate ; Zadig, particularly, 
felt full of esteem and sympathy for so amiable a per- 
son." 

" When the Hermit and he were in their apartment, 
they, for a long time, spoke in praise of their host." 

" At daybreak, the Hermit awoke his companion. 
• We must start,' said he, ' but while the people are all 
asleep, I wish to leave to this man a testimonial of my 
esteem and affection.' " 

" In saying these words, he took a brand and set the 
house afire." 

" Zadig astounded, cried aloud, and tried to prevent 
the commission of such an outrageous action." 

" The Hermit dragged him away by superior strength. 
The house was now in flames. The Hermit who, was 
already at a considerable distance, with his companion, 
tranquilly gazed upon the house as it burned." 

" ' Thank God,' said he, ' there is the house of our 
dear host destroyed from top to bottom — happy man.' " 

" At these words, Zadig was tempted, at the same 



158 PELICAN PAPERS. 

time, to burst into laughter, to curse the reverend man, 
to beat him, and to run away." 

" He did none of these, however, and always subject 
to the ascendancy of the Hermit over him, he followed 
him in spite of himself to their last proposed halting 
place." 

" This was at the house of a charitable and virtuous 
widow, who had a nephew fourteen years of age, full of 
attraction and her only hope. She did her best in per- 
forming the honors of her simple home. The next day 
she directed her nephew to accompany the travelers to 
the bridge, which, being broken, caused the passage to 
be dangerous. The young man, eager to be of service, 
walked before them. When they were on the bridge, 
'Come,' said the Hermit to the young man, 'I must 
signify my gratitude to your good aunt.' He thereupon 
took the child by the hair and threw him into the river. 
The child fell — appeared a moment above the water — 
and was then drawn away by the current. ' O, mon- 
ster! — O, most wicked of men!' cried Zadig. 'You 
promised me patience,' said the Hermit, interrupting 
him. ' Learn that under the ruins of that house Provi- 
dence has set on fire, the proprietor has found treasures 
of immense value ; learn, that this youth, whose life 
Providence has now taken, would have assassinated his 
aunt in one year, and you in two.' " 

"'Who told thee that — barbarian?' cried Zadig, — 
' and even if thou had'st read that in the book of fate, 
what right had'st thou to destroy a child that did thee 
no harm?' " 

" As Zadig was speaking, he perceived that the old 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 1 59 

man had no longer his beard, that his face assumed the 
features of youth — his hermit robe disappeared, four 
beautiful wings covered a majestic frame radiant with 
light. ' O, minister from heaven ! O, divine angel !' 
cried Zadig, bending to the earth, ' thou hast then de- 
scended from the heavens to teach a poor mortal to 
submit to the dooms of Providence.' " 

" ' Men,' said the angel Jesrad, 'judge in ignorance.' " 

To resume my story : 

Somers, the father, was a tall, thin, respectable-look- 
ing man, although he belonged, evidently, to the great 
army of the shabby genteel. His clothes were of an old 
cut and rather shiny and threadbare, but scrupulously 
brushed ; he had a fine-shaped head, bald in the middle, 
with two side growths brushed vertically, giving him 
the appearance of a diplomat or grandee — in fact, quite 
an aristocratic air ; his manners were quiet and courte- 
ous, and his speech deliberate. Although he talked 
little, what he said was sensible, and showed information 
rather than experience ; when he played whist he was 
so absorbed in the game that he made no remarks even 
during the deals. He, therefore, after taking his cards 
in hand, paid no attention to the other players except 
so far as they were part of the card playing machinery. 
Neither did his daughter Julia converse much ; she took 
her seat opposite Ferrers, and the game was kept up 
assiduously and rather gravely, until a late hour, with a 
slight intermission for the punch. 

When they retired and Julia put her well moulded 
hand into mine, and thanked me in her rich mezzo voice 
for affording herself and father a very pleasant evening, 



l6o PELICAN PAPERS. 

I noticed that Ferrers was looking at her very intently, 
if not admiringly. She made him a slight inclination, 
on leaving; and, with a calm " Good evening, Mr. Fer- 
rers," glided gracefully out of the room. 

There was never any fuss or angularity about Julia. 
She always did everything gracefully, smoothly and just 
right. Her composure was a prominent feature, and 
gave her an elegance of demeanor which would have 
graced a palace. She seldom laughed : smiles of urban- 
ity, however, occasionally lit her face, which was gener- 
ally marked by classic composure. 

There is nothing more attractive in a woman than a 
proper reserve or retenu, as apposed to the styles that 
may be called the gushing or demonstrative. A retenu 
style does not imply necessarily coldness or hauteur ; it 
is merely the art of holding one's self in hand, and not 
illustrating small or ordinary matters or topics by exag- 
gerated language or action. 

I had a friend once, who always objected to sitting 
next to a certain lady, a sprightly, intelligent woman, 
withal ; the reason he gave was, that, on the smallest 
occasion or most ordinary remark, she seemed as if she 
were preparing to spring down his tJiroat ! She made 
him uncomfortable ; and, as he could not keep himself 
up to her exaggerated state of nerve tension, he habitu- 
ally shunned her. 

Some women, in their converse with you, will illus- 
trate ordinary conversation with frowning, snapping 
their eyes, rolling them upwards, vociferating their 
words as if you were deaf, and grinning at you at every 
sentence. 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. l6l 

This habit of keeping the face on a continual grin, is 
either the result of mauvaise honte, or an indication of 
feebleness of character or brain. 

The casual observer might deem, from Julia's usual 
reserve and calmness of manner, that her character was 
a cold, unemotional one. 

But no one, I thought, could have such a deep, musical 
voice, with such rich, suggestive modulations and in- 
tonations, nor have such a pair of expansive and variant 
eyes, sometimes dreamy, and sometimes glowing like 
meteors, without their being exponents of a deep, 
emotional nature. 

There was one drawback to Julia — -she was an irre- 
deemable pauper. She had no prospects in life, what- 
ever — and was getting at the age when happiness and 
sympathy might develop her into a splendid woman, 
while neglect and routine would make her fall into a 
mental and physical decadence. When the dark days 
came, at about the twentieth year of her age, she had 
quietly dropped out of the social spheres of Mongrelia, 
and, in fact, rather discouraged visits that had become 
formal and half charitable : she disliked to be patronized 
or considered a subject of pity. 

Her acquaintances, and even friends, therefore, 
dropped her one by one. " Poor thing," they said, 
" her chances in life are over." — So Julia was left to live 
in obscure repose, and to cultivate her mental faculties 
with the staid, barren prospect of old maidism before her. 
she ought to have grown thin, sallow and peaked, but 
she did not, and accepted the situation with a composure 
which, in a man, would have been called philosophy. 



1 62 PELICAN PAPERS. 

She loved study and had saved a piano from the 
wreck; music was her only solace. Her main employ- 
ment was the care of her father and his home, consist- 
ing of the lodging rooms they occupied in an humble 
quarter of the town. There she assisted him in his 
laudable efforts to keep up the " shabby genteel." 

" Who the deuce are those interesting people, Peli- 
can ? " said Ferrers after father and daughter had de- 
parted. 

" Old friends," I said, "and still friends, although mem- 
bers of the shabby genteel order, and cut generally by 
their former acquaintances. Somers went into com- 
mercial business that he knew nothing of, when he had 
enough to live on without it; he was ruined by a part- 
ner's speculations, paid up the firm's debts, and has a 
pittance of just $800 a year, on which he and his 
daughter live, in lodgings, around the corner, humbly 
enough. I think the only amusements they have are 
their books and an occasional game of whist with me. 
They never borrow money, and how they scramble 
through on $800 a year is a mystery. I really am afraid 
they are half-starved, but Julia is a great manager." 

" Their old circle of friends and acquaintances left 
them and they don't care to make others. Although 
poor as rats, they are still awfully genteel, and, indeed, 
rather frighten people away by their stony gentility." 

" One can hardly find fault with them, however, for 
being quiet and unobtrusive." 

" What do you think of my friend Julia ? " 

" She 's splendid ! " said Ferrers, — How old is she ? " 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 163 

" About twenty-seven, I think, and not a flaw. She 
has fine health, and is never ailing ; look at the flow of 
color in her cheeks, although a brune. She seems to 
have some south of France blood in her. Do you mark 
her bluish black eyes? She and her father regularly 
walk their ten miles a day. She would make a splendid 
wife for some fellow who had no need of money and 
liked a noble natural woman and not a flibbertegibbit. 
If you were not engaged, Ferrers, you two might have 
made a superior combination." 

Ferrers' only answer to this remark was a nervous 
lashing of his leg and boot with a small cane he had in 
his hand. 

On leaving, I asked him to take another bout at cards 
with us, that day fortnight, to which he made the 
musing reply, " Perhaps." 

That evening fortnight, father and daughter pre- 
sented themselves. Somers and I preferring to play 
cribbage, Julia amused herself looking over my books. 

She was so engaged when Ferrers entered, and, as 
the father and I were deeply engaged in our game, he 
and Julia had necessarily to entertain each other, which 
they were left to do for upwards of an hour. 

Julia palpably flushed as Ferrers entered. She was 
looking handsomer than ever, for which she was not at 
all indebted to the accessories of dress ; her costume 
was as plain as possible. A black stuff gown, the 
only set off to which was a neck ribbon of dark blue. 
She wore no jewelry ; two cheap black ear pendants 
were the only decoration, and one black arrow which 
fastened in some way, a mass of chestnut hair, which 



164 PELICAN PAPERS. 

occasionally, with an auburn glint, shone in the firelight. 
I could not hear their conversation ; they seemed to be 
looking over books together, and talking about them ; 
the conversation seemed to be continuous and sprightly ; 
occasionally there was a sound of gentle sympathetic 
laughter, like the rippling of a brook. 

" What a really fine young woman," said Ferrers, 
when they left ; " do you mark the shape of her head, 
and how well set on her neck and bust ? What a shell- 
like ear, and what a straight back ! She carries herself 
like a Juno and talks like a Minerva. She don't force 
the talk either, but lets me draw her out. Pelican, this 
is the pleasantest evening I have passed this — " check- 
ing himself, he corrected the remark by saying " one 
of the pleasantest I have passed this winter." 

"They did not ask me to call," said Ferrers. 

" Of course not," said I, " they live almost on bare 
floors — besides, you are an engaged man, why should 
they?" 

" True enough," murmured Ferrers, somewhat gloom- 
ily. 

" When are you to be married ?" I then asked. 

" Don't talk about it," said Ferrers ; " but tell me 
about this girl — has she had no admirers?" 

"Two or three prigs," I answered, "in her palmy 
days — since then she has had no visiting acquaintances 
at all, except a few old women. She is of a New 
England family, and her relations mostly are living 
there or in England. But what's the girl to you ? I 
will say one thing, however, Ferrers, I wish you had 
seen this woman before you came into your present — " 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. I 65 

I paused. " Infernal scrape ! " cried he, as he banged 
the door. 

These two people met twice again, before the con- 
versation I had with Ferrers as below related — once he 
walked with her from church, once he met her at my 
house. On the latter occasion, at my request, she 
played some pieces on my grand piano and filled the 
room with rich, pensive melody. Her touch expressed 
emotion, intelligence and poetic feeling ; it came out 
from her heart and distilled through her fingers ; it re- 
vealed much to Ferrers, who listened with earnest at- 
tention. He was a music lover — almost an enthusiast, 
and here was a kindred taste and its fair minister. 

After the music, they played a game of cards together, 
but, as I observed went through with more talking than 
playing. 

I now began to see clearly that there was trouble 
brewing. Julia, although nothing of a flirt, was capti- 
vating this man, and leading him from an allegiance 
that was an obligation ; besides, she too might become 
interested. " The thing must be stopped," reasoned I. 

The next time Ferrers came, he led up as usual to 
the topic of Julia, when I thus addressed him : 

" Young man, you are well aware that you are under 
obligations of a strong recognized social and moral na- 
ture to Miss Slingsby, and, I believe, your marriage is 
fixed for a not very distant day." 

" Her friends count upon the alliance, not to speak 
of the girl herself, whose feelings are doubtless inter- 
ested, and to whom it would be an injury if, from any 
breach on your part, the engagement should be broken." 



l66 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" Of course, you have no deliberate intention of doing 
this, but you are doing what leads to it, you are put- 
ting yourself under the influence of, to my mind, one of 
the most, if not the most attractive and dangerous wo- 
men that a person of your perception and tastes could 
meet with, and a most formidable rival to the person 
you are plighted to. You must keep away from this 
temptation. I can see that she is exerting a quiet but 
strong influence over you, without any intention of so 
doing on her part. I can imagine, also, that you may in- 
terest her seriously, if you meet her oftener. The poor 
girl has trouble enough without having a hopeless affec- 
tion, and one which probably would be her last and 
only one. Don't you think, that, under the circum- 
stances, you had better stop coming here on the nights 
on which they come, which are Tuesdays, and prepare 
yourself for your future regular fare by abstinence from 
outside fascinating dainty food like this." 

" Pelican," Ferrers responded, " I am awfully afraid 
your words are wise." 

" I am not one who casts his sensibilities about gen- 
erally, but I will humbly own that your guest is an ex- 
ceedingly dangerous person, to one who has the proper 
appreciation of her. I never met a young woman com- 
bining, more attractively, intelligence and female charm. 
She is positively the most agreeable and sensible talker 
of any woman I ever knew, and her rich, deep voice 
thrills me like electricity." 

" I must confess that her intelligence, her dignity of 
deportment, naturalness of character, utter want of co- 
quetry, allied to her beautiful and expressive features, 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. I 67 

have convinced me, even more than I have yet been 
convinced, that my present relations to Miss Slingsby 
are most unfortunate for both of us." 

" It was a foolish, absurd mistake on my part. I had 
never direct intention to become bound to her. The 
attractions and propinquity of a handsome, rattling, 
dashing girl, apparently fond of me, overcame all pru- 
dence and previous resolutions in such matters, and, I 
confess, I either jumped into the hedge with my eyes 
blinded, or was caught in a trap, I don't know which." 

"And now," said I, "you are apparently about to 
jump into another hedge to scratch your eyes in again, 
like Mother Goose's man." 

"It's no joke," continued Ferrers. "I now find 
Miss Slingsby has a flippant, insincere character. You 
see, I make no stranger of you and I must pour myself 
out to somebody." 

" She is exacting and pettish, and has no solid foun- 
dation of character, no good sense, and, I think, no great 
education. I can never reason with her ; she acts 
merely by impulses and prejudices." 

" Conformation to the social or fashion code seems to 
absorb all her ideas and most of her intellect. I doubt, 
too, whether she has really, what is called, affection for 
me." 

" I have been picked out as a partner of a social event 
in her life, which is supposed to be de riguer for the 
female ; and here I am, in chains to one whom I 
believe, is a shallow, trifling woman." 

" I talk strongly, my old boy, but I have no one else 
to commune with in this way." 



1 68 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" But it 's awful — it 's frightful," continued he, pacing 
the room, " this being tied up for time and eternity, 
when there is almost a repulsion. I detest this playing 
the love hypocrite — this profession of affection that 
don't exist — this mockery of feeling — this leading to a 
union that will probably be mutually distasteful, and 
consequently wretched. And yet, of course, honor com- 
pels the keeping up of all the forms, and compels me to 
appear even joyful at the expected performance of this 
miserable contract." 

" ' The law of honor,' says Paley, ' is a mere system 
of rules constructed by people of fashion, and calculated 
to facilitate their intercourse with each other.' " 

" My ideas of honor, however, give it a sterner code. 
By it, I feel compelled to sacrifice myself — ay, that is 
the word, — and to keep, at all risks, an obligation the 
breaking of which might produce mortification, perhaps 
unhappiness, to another." 

" No, my boy — as I have made my bed so I must 
lie in it." 

" It is all very well for judgment to step in now, and 
criticise the action of the impulses — for reason to con- 
demn the pranks played by the rascally senses — for re- 
flection to bring wisdom, and for experience to shake 
his miserable old head and say, ' I might have told you 
so.' " 

" I have to bow to the stern logic of facts. Why is 
there no familiar numen, such as Socrates had, to stand 
by one's shoulder and forewarn us against ourselves?" 

" To cry ' breakers ahead,' when we are about taking 
a tack that leads to a life shipwreck — in other words, to 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 1 69 

keep us from making irrevocable, eternal, irredeemable 
fools of ourselves?" 

" I confess, I do not see any way out of this thing, 
but to yield to fate, or the infernal circumstances 
that have led to this and to take the blow — I see no 
light — do you ?" 

"Well," I remarked, stirring my punch, "the problem 
socially and morally considered is not an easy one — 
pray is there no other person that is visiting Miss 
Slingsby? No one else whose society seems agreeable 
to her?" 

" Why, yes — several — she said I must not be jealous, 
or deprive her of the attentions of others, for the short 
time left her. In fact, she is rather surrounded, and I 
think, takes the thing automatically." 

" Latterly, a French Count, one de Becherolle, has 
appeared upon the scene, and seems quite assiduous. 
He is one of those Frenchmen that come over on a 
matrimonial venture. You know, no Frenchman ever 
deserts Paris and comes to this benighted land unless it 
is on business." 

" Well, Ferrers," I replied, " the only advice I think 
I am capable of giving you is what I once before gave 
in a similar case, that is, ' to let events take their 
course.' 

" Perhaps the chain of events will do something for 
you and work out your salvation." 

" This love business is generally a troublesome mat- 
ter to deal with ; it is not guided by intentions nor the 
will, its results are whimsical and its course tortuous." 

" In the words of a master mind :" 



I70 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" ' Cupid's but-shaft is too hard for 
Hercules' club ; 

His disgrace is to be called boy, 
But his glory is to subdue men.' " 

" Hang your poetry," responded Ferrers ; " if that is 
all the advice you can give me I will bid you good 
night." 

As he was moodily standing by the half-opened door, 
I called out to him, " There is one other piece of advice 
I will give you." 

" What 's that ?" 

" Let the Count have full swing." 

" Pshaw!" said he, as he banged the door. 

The next Tuesday evening, Somers and his daughter 
came as usual. She was highly flushed when she en- 
tered, and grew pale, I thought, when she observed that 
Ferrers was not in the room. 

Her father and I played cribbage together. 

She read during most of the evening and afterwards 
sat down at the piano, and played dreamy music in 
minor chords. 

After our game, I went into the other room ; she had 
ceased playing ; her head was resting on her hand and 
leaned forward over the key-board. 

When she suddenly raised her head, as I entered, her 
eyelashes, I noticed, dropped two quick tears. 

" One of the sad muffled dramas of life is going on," 
mused I, when they left. 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 171 

Being compelled to go South for two or three months, 
I lost cognizance of the dramatis persona; of my short 
story. 

On my return, I found a note from Julia, asking me, 
as her father had an attack of rheumatism, and was con- 
fined to the house, to kindly visit their lodgings, the 
next evening, to amuse him with a game of cards. I 
accepted the invitation, particularly, as I had never 
been inside of their lodgings and was somewhat curious 
to see how my cultivated friends kept up the '■shabby 
genteel." 

The door of their sitting-room was opened by a tidy 
girl, who apparently was the only domestic. 

The sitting-room was plain and homely, but scrupu- 
lously neat ; a few small engravings were hung about as 
the only decorations ; the piano was at one end of the 
room and a lounge on which the old gentleman reclined 
at the other ; in the middle was the table, spread with 
some quaint china, for tea, and opposite was a small 
Franklin stove, on which a polished copper kettle was 
singing merrily. 

Julia made and served out the tea, and toasted the 
home-made bread, poached some eggs and did the hon- 
ors of the table with easy grace. What I most admired 
was that she made no remarks or apologies as to the 
deficiencies, straitened circumstances, or such matters ; 
but ministered to us with as much ease and apparent 
satisfaction as if the humble home and its accessories 
were all that could be desired. 

After tea, she brought me her father's cigar-case, and 
an allumette for our cigars. Smoking was the only in- 



172 PELICAN PAPERS. 

dulgence the old gentleman kept up, and no doubt his 
daughter had to pinch herself to afford him this little 
luxury. I noticed his cigars were domestic, and after a 
few puffs I carefully exchanged mine for one of my own 
" royal eagles." 

After the cigars were finished we took our places for 
three-handed whist. I noticed that Julia and the 
dummy played without their usual skill. Indeed, she 
played very badly, and made two careless mistakes. 
While the old gentleman was scolding her, a ring at the 
door was heard. 

Julia dropped her cards suddenly, and turned pale as 
a ghost ; then a flush like an aurora, suffused her cheeks 
and neck and face, and she rushed to the door. 

To her entered Mr. Ferrers ; and, before that gentle- 
man said a word, two arms were around her neck, and a 
kiss resounded through the little room that sounded 
like the crack of a whip. 

" A-hem !" said I, throwing down my cards. 

" The old, old story," murmured the old gentleman, 
sagely wagging his head, as he looked at me, and wiped 
his spectacles. 

" Pelican ! my dear old boy, congratulate me," ex- 
claimed Ferrers, as he wrung my hand till it winced, 
" you, of course, infer that I am the happiest man in 
the world ! " 

" Well, I confess," said I. "that I hardly expected 
this — but if so be, that this be so, I do indeed think 
that you ought to be a very happy man. I endorse the 
whole thing with all my heart." 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. 1 73 

Julia took my hand and pressed it to her lips. 

The game was resumed with a new player, and was 
the most erratic one ever played by that party. 

I could not take my eyes from the young woman ; I 
never saw complete happiness so expressed on a human 
face. The eyes had a spell of light ; soft, deep, 
penetrating and illuminating, that made them indeed 
seem windows of the soul. 

There was radiance diffused over her whole coun- 
tenance, and a glow, as of a fire within, came out with 
an earnestness of expression that made each beautiful 
feature speak with joy. 

Ferrers walked home with me and passed half an 
hour at my house. 

" The course of events has indeed been working," 
said he. 

" The Count, as you suggested, l cut me out! I am 
supposed to be a terribly ill used man. I am an object 
of commiseration to observers, but, glory to God ! I 
need not tell you that I revel in the change. It seems 
as if a good being had interfered and worked these 
things." 

" But tell me the result of the idyl," said I. " Has 
the Count actually captured the prize ?" 

" Read that," said Ferrers, as he handed me a slip 
cut from one of the gossiping papers of the day. 

The extract was from the letter of a local correspond- 
ent, and read as follows : 



174 pelican papers. 

" Saved from an Adventurer." 

" The Happy Marriage of a Lady who had been Betrothed 
to a Fraudulent Count." 

" Mongrelia, Feb. 26. — In December last, Miss Aurora 
Slingsby, of this city, one of the society belles, was to 
have been married to a French Count named Nicholas 
Becherolle. No less than eleven hundred invitations 
had been issued, and a grand affair was expected. Two 
days before the ceremony it was discovered that the 
supposed Count was an adventurer, with two wives and 
several children. He was arrested on a charge of felony 
in Mongrelia, and has been heard of no more. Instead 
of tearing her hair and going into sackcloth and ashes, 
the charming Miss Slingsby dried her tears and went 
into society. The following notice, which appeared in 
the papers this week, may fairly be termed the sequel 
to the story: " 

" ' The marriage of Miss Aurora Slingsby, daughter 
of Hibbard Slingsby, Esq., to T. Peabody Jones, Esq., 
occurred Tuesday evening, at the home of the bride's 
parents. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. 
Ignatius Slabber, D. D. The newly-wedded couple left 
for a short trip to the South.' " 



I never knew two people so thoroughly matched as 
Ferrers and his wife. 

If there ever were two human beings that seemed to 
have found a destiny that thoroughly suited them, it is 
they. 

Instead of smiling at fate they smile with fate. 

There is not only mental accord and the appreciation 
of mind by mind, but harmony of the sensibilities, and 
sympathy of the moral sentiments. 



THE SHABBY GENTEEL. I 75 

The observance of their sympathetic relation makes 
me, at times, mourn over my own solitude and that 
decadence of the sensibilities that springs from their 
disuse — and yet — if they had been developed, they 
might not have found a similar happiness — "Chacun" 
does not always find his "Cliacune" 

These two people are my best friends. We still keep 
up our whist — the only trouble is, that Ferrers and his 
wife always insist upon being partners — they will never 
play against each other. 



BRAIN SCATTERING. 



I do not now recall but one brain scatterer who at- 
tained historic notoriety. 

His historic success was due not to any result effected 
by his brains, but to the mere fact that he was a re- 
markable brain scatterer. 

His name was James Crichton — agnomened "the 
admirable." 

At the age of twenty, James boasted that he had run 
through the whole circle of science, and could write and 
speak ten languages. He was a poet, a rhetorician, a 
logician, a philosopher, a theologian, a dramatist, a 
musician, and a successful tilter. 

He displayed himself before the courts and universi- 
ties of Europe ; but was killed by a drunken rascal, who 
envied his brain scattering. Probably none of his varied 
acquisitions would have produced for him any beneficial 
result, if he had lived long enough to make a decided 
failure. 

He would have gone on developing his brains, only 
the more to scatter them. 

This would have been his ambition, and he would, 
finally, have dwindled into obscurity, like all other brain 
scatterers. 

Here a little and there a little, would, at last, have 
made a Mr. Forcible Feeble of him. 



BRAIN SCATTERING. 177 

He would have rolled about without gathering any 
moss. He would have been finally beaten in any one 
line by the proficients in that line, whose proficiency 
might have arisen, but little from natural gift, but much 
from systematised .plodding. 

Experience shows that very little is achieved in life 
except from concentration of brain and directness of 
purpose. 

Traveling around a circle never brings one to the 
centre. 

One must start on a radius and work on that. 

The centre is never reached by excursions on tan- 
gents. 

If Alexander had dribbled his energy on music, art, 
and languages, think you he could have conquered his 
worlds ? 

If Marlborough or if Bonaparte had scattered their 
brains on philosophy and theology, think you they would 
have turned out the successful throat cutters that they 
were ? 

If Richelieu or Chatham had undertaken to lead 
armies as well as to study out international policy, 
would they have aggrandized the State ? 

If Shakespeare or Milton had tried to be rhetoricians 
and logicians as well as poets, would we have had 
Hamlet or Paradise Lost ? 

If Newton had tried his hand at music as well as 
science, or if Beethoven, had cudgeled his brains over the 
law of gravity, would the one have given us the " Prin- 
cipia " or the other the Symphony in B Minor ? 

Systematic plodding by a dullard, in a direct line, will 



178 PELICAN PAPERS. 

often accomplish all that genius could achieve. The 
tortoise will, in time, reach the goal of the fleet 
Achilles. 

There are two things that can reach the top of a 
pyramid, says an English thinker — an eagle and a rep- 
tile. 

A small bullet fired from a rifle will accomplish a hit 
when the scattering missiles of a bomb will fail ; and 
light diffused will be feeble, while concentrated, it will 
burn. 

It is pleasant to prelude variously with the faculties 
but life will ebb in experimenting, and the cords may 
snap ere the tune is played. 

Concentrated action is the sesame that opens fortune's 
door. 

Circumstances will make some men successful, but 
they make no man great. They are merely the prizes 
in the chance lottery, and any fool may blindly draw 
them. Birth, money, luck are not to be reckoned 
among the factors of successful life, but as the acci- 
dents. 

Even those who are born in the purple must give di- 
rect work to their governing business, if they do not 
want to be deposed, murdered, or be placarded by Clio, 
as noodles, for all time. See how she has chronicled 
some of these lazaroni : — Louis the Stammerer, Child- 
eric the Idle, Charles the Fat, and Charles the Simple. 

Sardanapalus, Edward the Second, Richard the Sec- 
ond, and Charles the Second did not attend to their 
business, and had to walk into Hades for it. 



BRAIN SCATTERING. 1 79 

Even the rich have to work to keep their wealth. 
Croesus vainly fought to retain his. 

Some men will hang on to others and rise with them, 
as one might rise with a balloon ; but they are mere 
parasites, and not to be noted. 

Some people blow rams' horns, and expect the walls 
of Jerichos to fall down before them. 

Some people lie on their backs and dream that the 
golden apples of the garden of Hesperides will fall in 
their mouths They will not go to fight the dragon 
who guards them ; . and they are too lazy to contend 
with Atlanta in the race — too fearful to beard the 
Sphinx, or to sail, on unknown seas, for the golden 
fleece. 

There is a large army of lotos eaters, day-dreamers, 
jacket stuffers, sluggards, platter pepperers, goose caps, 
fat brains, dizzards, bedlamites, wiggle wagglers, door- 
mice, chuckle heads, muddle pates, niddy noddies, peri- 
winkles, mum-chances, wind blowers, ghibberoids^ bag 
pipers, glow worms, winnowers, bog trotters, skip jacks, 
gaberlunzies, ninny hammers, buzzards, bull-calves, 
dunder heads, nincompoops, ranti-poles, popinjays, 
jack-a-napes, lubbers, pottle breakers, jack-a-dandies, 
fiddle faddlers, tongue rattlers, whistlers, panenfiladers, 
and drenching-horns. 

Such as these form the mere back ground of humanity 
and are not, in this connection, subjects of considera- 
tion. They are mere anatomical machines. 

There is no way of capturing Fortune except by hard 
work and hard knocks. Begging,- praying dreaming, 
wishing and whistling will not do it. She is not to be 



180 PELICAN PAPERS. 

decoyed. She is fleet, changeable, cruel, capricious, 
deceiving, hard-hearted, insensible. Her smiles encour- 
age but to beguile — her beckonings are meant to delude. 
You must chase her, perhaps, for a lifetime before she 
is caught — and knock her in the head before she will 
yield — and then, perhaps, you will die enfeebled in the 
struggle — while she flies off, immortal ! — laughing at her 
prey. 

The winners in the race must bear a hand, kick up a 
dust, catch at straws, take time by the forelock, make 
hay while the sun shines, have a finger in the pie, fol- 
low the scent, pull the oar, take stitches in time, put 
their best leg forward, bear the ups and the downs, rush 
from pillar to post, take a tow, steal a march, help a 
lame dog over the stile, row against the stream, beat up 
recruits, blow the fire, fan the flame, veer with the 
wind, pass the Rubicon, cling like ivy, get in the har- 
ness, go to loggerheads, take up the cudgels, come to 
the scratch, bell the cat, take the bull by the horns, 
throw down the gauntlet, swallow kettles of fish and 
seas of trouble, and hop, run, bounce, lay about, strike 
home, keep going, velitate, scramble, dash or rush, as 
the occasion may require : 

I have a friend, one Jack Compass, who had an ex- 
cellent education and very fair ability, and whose ambi- 
tion was to be prominent and successful. 

He had aptitude and energy, industry and pluck — 
but, he has been traveling around a circle all his life ; 
and now, at forty-five, has subsided into a nonentity. 

He has been a " brain scatterer." 

He started with the idea of being a great lawyer. 



BRAIN SCATTERING. l8l 

His application, at first, in the legal line, was assidu- 
ous, his ideas lofty, and his efforts marked by increasing 
success. He was an enthusiast, as well as a laborer. 
He talked his law at you, at all times and places, and 
fairly bored one with it. 

" Jack will be a shining professional light," thought 
his friends. " He is a born jurist. The life just suits 
him." 

He subsequently fell in with some lively blades, and 
the gaiety and jollity of social and convivial life weaned 
him away from that jealous and exacting mistress, the 
Law, who will brook no rival. 

His studies were neglected, his avocation became 
distasteful, those who were plodding behind outstripped 
him, and he left his profession in disgust. Then, as a 
votary of gay, social life, and a leader in fashionable 
circles, he squandered nearly a lustrum of his existence. 

Suddenly, he thought he had an adaptation for a 
financial career, and passed his time with schemers and 
money dreamers. 

He was wound around the fingers of experts and 
sharpers — he thought he could learn, in a few months, 
what it had taken others years of experience to acquire. 

He was cajoled, led away, robbed, and, finally, thrown 
out of the financial mart — disappointed, humiliated and 
nearly beggared. 

Jack then thought he would try political life. He 
was a good speaker, and had easy, jovial manners — just 
the man to succeed. 

He, accordingly, joined a political party, and ex- 
pounded eloquently its lofty principles and patriotic aims. 



182 PELICAN PAPERS. 

He attached himself to prominent political figur- 
ants, spent money and time, lost a great deal of his 
self-respect by flattering this man and upholding that 
man, both of whom he, perhaps, heartily despised, and 
lost social cast by association with political intriguers. 
After two or three years of hard service for his party, 
he thought, of course, that he would secure some dis- 
tinguished political position. 

But somehow or another, Jack was a bad judge of 
" sinking ships ;" he would leave one organization and 
join another, with an idea that the former was going 
down when it was really on the eve of full sail to success, 
and sometimes, Jack's party would leave him, and 
change its principles just as he was most earnest in his 
advocacy of them. 

He found the great political leaders, too, singularly 
versatile. They had a sort of Proteus-like tendency, 
that made them difficult to follow — and he, sometimes, 
would think he was doing some singular service to a 
great man when, in fact, he was treading on his toes — 
and instead of making a friend he was cultivating a po- 
litical enmity. He found, too, a singular ingratitude 
in political parties and people. 

When his party triumphed he was, somehow, always 
left out in the cold. Either an unknown man received 
the coveted honors, or a political enemy was bought 
over with them. 

He never could get at the scent of political bargaining. 

There was always something going on, behind the 
scenes, which he was not let in to know. 

Even when his party triumphed and some great man, 



BRAIN SCATTERING. 1 83 

whose cause he had espoused, whose interests he had 
advanced and whose position he had done much to 
secure — came to the front, the great man, on attaining 
his reward, became singularly oblivious, The great 
man thought it more for his true interests to slaughter 
his friends and curry favor with others. The result was 
that Jack was always left in the lurch. 

To be sure he had his principles left, but, somehow 
or other, Jack did not fully appreciate them. He found 
that those of others were generally covers to ambition, 
or cloaks to fraud. 

He lost confidence in his party and its principles, and 
in abstract as well as political virtue He found politics 
was a business like others that had to be learned, and 
he had begun somewhat too late in life to acquire it. 

Literature now beguiled him with her soft eyes and 
dreamy smile. 

■' Here is a career of ease and congeniality," thought 
he. 

" How many have attained success in this delightful 
way! 

" How many half-brained men and women have 
achieved name, fame and fortune, by merely writing 
down their ideas ! " 

" Any man with my education, and experience of life, 
can write a successful book! " 

I found him one day in his room, radiant over a com- 
position that he had just finished. 

He had been fired by reading Shelley's " Sky Lark," 
which had contributed much to make that poet's fame, 



1 84 PELICAN PAPERS. 

and it seemed an easy thing to Jack, to write something 
in that style. 

" I have taken ' The Eagle,' said he, " it is a higher, 
nobler subject than a petty sky lark." 

" You will observe, too, the more stately measure, in 
blank verse, that I have adopted." 

" I will adopt the same measure for an epic I have 
sketched out, with the career of Columbus as the theme. 
One must start, however, I suppose, more quietly, so 
that the public may get used to you by degrees, and 
keep craving for more." 

" I want to read my " Eagle " to you, Pelican — sit 
down there, and hear it." 

" You would be astonished to know how easy this 
thing is." 

" I take up the subject in its nude state, sketch out the 
sub-stratum and a few incidents, no matter how com- 
mon place ; then work them up into a metaphoric tran- 
sition, throw in exalted imagery and stately verbiage : 
and, with the assistance of the poet's great adjunct, 
Imagination, presto, you have your " Eagle " served up 
in a brilliant ode or sonnet, as the case may be." 

" I prefer the ode — it gives you more scope — hang 
your sonnets — it is dribbling work." 

" Listen now — " 

"If you don't call this first-class poetry — equal to 
your Shelleys and your Keats, then you are no judge." 

I have kept a copy of Jack's " Eagle." Here it is, and 
the remarks that took place on his reading it : 



brain scattering. 1 85 

" The Eagle." 

" Bald, time-worn hermit of the blue profound, 
That binds in vap'ry wilderness the Earth, 
Begirting all its varied thought and life 
With awful chasm of immensurate space. 
And folding all its murmurings within 
A deep, dull pall of silence !" 

" There, — Earth surmounting, overhanging — thou !" 
Alone, majestic, far from other life ; 
Breathing great Nature's essence, where it flows 
Fresh from the sources of creative might, 
Deep to thy Spirit — -' till, impregnate all 
With power, and freedom, and a noble rage- 
Up — up — th' unfathomed dome 
That ever flies thee, and defying space. 
E'en in its ancient realms, thou soarest, still, 
Like an embodied and immortal hope, 
Still, to a goal most infinite!" 

" What do you think of that?" said Jack ; " is there 
not strength, power and imagination for you ? A plain 
idea, you see, merely the Eagle flying in the air — see 
how poetry sublimates and carries him into the im- 
mensity. You see, I've got the trick of the thing. My 
imagination was always my forte. I make every word 
tell. Every word kits, like a point-blank shot — in fact, 
there is an idea or metaphor in every word." 

" Excellent ! — excellent !" — said I ; " you have the 
real afflatus. Go on — I prithee — It beats Shelley." 

" Now," said Jack, " I will carry him higher up." 



1 86 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" Revolving, now, in swift recurrent rounds, 
And sweeping Heaven with thy feathered might, 
Thou quaffest freedom in a wild delight — 
Then fiercely, eye to eye — unflinching — stern — 
Thou dar'st th' adult Day-God's fiery disk — 
Who cannot quail nor move thee — 
Or pausing — sudden — in superior flight, 
Immobile as the steady polar star ; 
In grim quiescence, thou o'erhang'st sublime, 
Like to a winged god, surveying far 
The groveling earth — to thee a festering ball 
' Round which the Sea, a glazed baldric, shines, 
With man but grains of undistinguished dust." 

" Good — good ! " said I, as Jack paused to take 
breath, after roaring out tne above, with his eyes fixed 
on the cornice of his room ; " but, don't you think, 
calling the earth ' a festering ball ' is rather too strong 
— rather too much like a cheese?" 

" Good gracious !" said Jack, " have you no poetic 
fervor — it 's not half strong enough — the imagery of 
that word is the best thing in the poem — it means 
everything. It 's just what the earth would appear 
like, to a being a thousand miles off, as the eagle is sup- 
posed to be — writhing, twisting, wriggling, with poor, 
festering humanity." 

" Listen, now — I take the Eagle among the clouds :" 

" Child of the clouds ! that hail thee from afar ; 
The sole one thing of life that visits them — 
They, joyous, hail thee, with a weeping joy, 



BRAIN SCATTERING. 187 

And throw their glories ' round thy rugged strength ; 

Where, all embosomed in their wild embrace, 

Thou drinkest from their fierce spirit — 

Then revellest amid the fiery play 

Of elemental war — the battling winds 

The tuneful minstrels that with joy bestir 

The tufted power of thy shaggy breast ; 

And, howling ' neath thy rugous ancient coat, 

Tug at thy steel tough sinews — all in vain — 

Then join their dreadful mnsic to thy shriek 

That paeans wildly o'er the thunder shock — 

' Till full of fiery ecstasy and rage, 

Soaring to realms above the riot clouds, 

Thou spurn'st the throbbing horrors of the storm !" 

Tears of sympathetic sublimity with his great sub- 
ject came into Jack's eyes, as he delivered himself 
of the above powerful blank verse. His voice, rising 
crescendo, became so loud and piercing, as the eagle 
mounted higher and higher, that the female servant of 
his apartment knocked at the door, and finally put her 
head in, saying, 

" Dear, dear — I thought ye was being a hurted, Mr. 
Compass — dear." 

" Away ! — you devil !" — roared Jack, as he flung a 
boot at her astonished head, which was withdrawn sud- 
denly, like a snapping turtle's. 

After he had recovered his ideas and equanimity, he 
thus resumed, in a somewhat lower tone, and with a 
terrible frown on his disturbed brow : 



1 88 PELICAN PAPERS. 

" Untired, unfearing and aspiring — still — still — 
Thou risest — all alone^sublime — ! 
Beating, with measured stroke, the virgin air, 
To the dim regions, where, in gloomy state, 
Grim silence — awful — solitary reigns, 
Like to a viewless and inactive death, 
Doomed to a dull negation — 
There, ' mid the horrors of those shoreless seas, 
Thou sailest on, in restless pilgrimage, 
Feeding on thoughts that thy wild spirit grasps 
Forth from the dread sublimity around — 
Aspiring, still — as one that climbs to see 
Tli untold glories of t/i verge of Heaven ! 

" Good gracious ! you are not going to carry the 
eagle up to Heaven, are you, Jack?" said I humbly. 

f Why not — why not — if I choose to, you poor, pro- 
saic devil, you ?" said Jack, glaring like a maniac at me, 
— "you haven't a thimbleful of poetry in you." 

"Go on — go on — Jack," said I, deprecatingly — "it's 
grand !" 

He then roared out the rest, concluding with a sort 
of apotheosis of himself into the clouds, delivered in a 
plaintive tremolo, that showed he felt his great subject 
to the very marrow : 

" King of the air — the free, the boundless air ! 
And free as air — in all thy gloom and pride, 
Thou seem'st incarnate of some spirit doomed 
To roam and seek, to seek but never find, 
In restless aiming of surmounting thought, 



BRAIN SCATTERING. 1 89 

Some bold, dread, stern resolvement ; 

Or else, in gnawing horror of remorse, 

For crime untold, to flee afar from earth — 

Away! — away! — from Earth and Hell! — 

To bathe the quenchless fever of thy guilt 

In the pure coolings of th' innocent air, 

To roam in freedom, and to pour thy woe 

On the dull ear of unrevealing space. 

Lend me thy wings ! — give me thy rugged strength ! 

And stern resolve, and master spirit ail ! — 

Let me, too, rise o'er this tumultuous scene — 

For me let all this wearying earth but seem 

Some dim, dull record of dissolved dream — 

Away ! — away ! — from all the troublous thought, 

The ceaseless memories of grief that come, 

In restless surges from the fevered Past, 

And sweep the soul to gloom. 

Let me, too, pierce beyond o'erwhelming clouds, 

And soar away above the earth and them, 

And all the storms that rack defenceless life ; 

To flee, like thee, throughout the realms of air, 

And bathe the spirit in Lethean space — 

There, let me, in her solemn, silent shrine, 

Worship great NATURE and great NATURE'S King ! 

And all forgotten by the World and Time, 

Aim for eternal glories — still above /" 

After the delivery of the above, Mr. Compass flung 
himself, exhausted, in an arm-chair, and looked at me 
with an expression, which plainly said, " Well, sir ! — 
what do you think of that ?" 



I90 PELICAN PAPERS. 

There was nothing for me to do, but, on leaving, to 
slap him heartily on the back, and exclaim enthusiastic- 
ally, " Jack, you are a poet !" 

" I believe I am," responded he, blandly, shaking me 
heartily by the hand ; " I've got it in me — it 's there — 
and it will come out," said he, violently smiting his 
chest. " Some day you shall hear my epic." 

Soon after this I heard from a mutual friend that the 
" Eagle " had been sent to a half dozen magazines, but 
each time had been returned with the terrible printed 
slip noting that it had been " respectfully declined." 

Jack's epic was never finished. He worked for a 
year at it, but, somehow or other, I understood from 
the same friend, that the afflatus gave out as well as the 
ideas, at about the third canto ; and Jack never got his 
Columbus further than the middle of the ocean. 

Going into a suburban church some years afterwards, 
one day, while visiting a friend, what was my astonish- 
ment to find Jack in a surplice, sitting in the chancel. 
His whiskers were neatly brushed and he had the proper 
sacerdotal baldness. 

My astonishment was further increased by seeing 
him, afterwards, mount the pulpit and rattle off a ser- 
mon, with a fair degree of unctiousness. 

Congratulating him at the finish on his eloquent dis- 
course, he blandly remarked, 

" Pelican, I have at last hit the right thing — this, my 
dear boy, gives me pleasant occupation, a peaceful 
abode, and a calm, holy life ; I am surrounded by hum- 
ble but appreciative friends. I had always a taste for 



BRAIN SCATTERING. I9I 

pulpit oratory. Besides, I am doing a great deal of 
good — thank God ! How do you like my style? — it is 
the hortatory " 

Six months afterwards, I heard that Jack had given 
up his church — or rather, it had given him up — it had 
been sold for debt. 

"What sort of a clergyman did Compass make?" 
said I to my suburban friend, afterwards. 

" Queer enough," responded he ; " he became awfully 
lazy, and he was always too busy drinking tea and play- 
ing croquet with the girls, to be of any use. When 
there was a funeral going on he always sent for the old 
clergyman of the next village. He was only taken on 
trial ; he wouldn't have stayed, even if the church had 
been kept up ; how he managed to get into orders I 
don't know. I doubt if he had studied for his full time 
— some said he was only a deacon." 

" Did you near the row over his great Centennial 
trial sermon ? Read this newspaper slip, which I cut 
out at the time and put in my scrap-book." 

The slip read as follows : 

" The Rev. Mr. Compass, formerly of Mongrelia, was 
called some months since to the St. Lazarus Episcopal 
Church at Little Fogville, where, last week, he preached 
a most eloquent centennial sermon, on which he was 
warmly congratulated by his parishioners. Next day, 
some one discovered that the sermon had been 
preached by the Rev. Melancthon W. Smiley, at Potts- 



I92 PELICAN PAPERS. 

ville, the preceding year, commemorative of the settle- 
ment of that thriving town. There is much excitement 
over the discovery. Mr. Compass denies that there 
was any plagiarism in the matter." 

The last I heard of Jack was, that he was on his way 
to Montana as one of the Mining Engineers of the 
" Aladdin Silver Rock Consolidated Mining and Re- 
fining Company." 



